Digital Rights Management Operating System

Anonymous Coward sent in a note about Microsoft being granted a patent on a "Digital Rights Management Operating System". Anything more to say? Nope, don't think so. After Windows XP will be Windows DRM.

Comments

Torches, anyone?

[Zen Mastuh]

It sounds like high time for some good ol' mob action. I would join in, but don't feel like being labelled a terrorist for supporting the rights of American citizens to control the products they own.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

some good ol' mob action

How about not using Microsoft products and telling (and helping [1]) others to do the same?

[1] Yes, helping, not telling them to "RTFM", fucking zealots.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[renehollan]

That's the obvious answer, until Linux (and all other non-DRM operating systems) is declared a "terrorist weapon".

We saw the trend with DVD playback development under Linux: the tools were declared "illegal", or "infringing", and cries of legitimate uses were met with the response, "it isn't necessary to make Linux do that, because Windows already does" [paraphrasing, of course].

So, while your suggestion is logical (though I take exception to calling Linux, "shitty", or "little"), it may not be legally practical.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Mr_Matt]

Holy crap - I wasn't thinking about torches until I read this little snippet from the patent:

The unusual property of digital content is that the publisher (or reseller) gives or sells the content to a client, but continues to restrict rights to use the content even after the content is under the sole physical control of the client.


...and later still...

The user that possesses the digital bits often does not have full rights to their use; instead, the provider retains at least some of the rights.

This "peculiar arrangement" (verbatim from the patent app) is everything that is wrong with the application of copyright law to digital media as opposed to analog media. Microsoft got it exactly right - it's a damn peculiar arrangement. Unfortunately for us, instead of realizing the crappiness of this situation, they've integrated the peculiar arrrangement part and parcel into a computer operating system, to the maximization of profit both for Microsoft and for "digital content providers." Here we have something as fundamental as a computer operating system designed around an idea that destroys rights we've otherwise enjoyed for literally hundreds of years - for nothing more than to line the pockets of people who are already famously rich. Time for torches, indeed.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[harlows_monkeys]

Uhm...there's no difference between analog and digital media here, except that digital media is way easier to copy.

The underlying theme of the "it was OK for analog, but copyright has no place in digital" argument that is common on slashdot is really "with digital media, copyright actually incoveniences me, so I'm against it".

Re:Torches, anyone?

[rossz]

Was it Jefferson who said "the trees of liberty must occassionally be watered with the blood of patriots"?

Personally, I would prefer to use the blood of the asshole Senators and Congressmen who show absolute contempt for our rights.

Every single one of those bastards has violated their oath of office when they pass an obviously unConstitutional law.

Let's have a new Constitutional ammendement. Each year, we get to lynch one Senator and one Congressman on the capital steps. This will serve as a reminder of who the hell they work for.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Tackhead]

> The user that possesses the digital bits often does not have full rights to their use; instead, the provider retains at least some of the rights.

I say let Microsoft have the patent to this.

I mean, what good is an operating system that does this?

It's innovative, but I'm as likely to buy one as I'm likely to buy a square wheel, or a chainsaw with a blade made of marshmallow.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[abe ferlman]

"peculiar institution" is what it makes me think of.

I don't want anyone controlling the information I have access to. But it's going to take a cataclysmic shift in public opinion before that will happen, on the scale of 10 times what napster was. Maybe there's hope in freenet, if only they would use a free language.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Mr_Matt]

Uhm...there's no difference between analog and digital media here, except that digital media is way easier to copy.

No, incorrect. There IS a difference between the way digital media and analog media is treated in copyright law - hard to believe, but true. When you buy a book, you have total control over the physical content of that book, and can use the full pantheon of fair use rights with that book. When you buy software, or a DVD, you do not have control over the media in question - see the DMCA. That's what's so shocking about the DMCA and digital IP laws being bandied about - and what's so terrifying about this MS patent.

Check out Jessica Litman's book "Digital Copyright" for a much better, more in-depth discussion about how we (assuming "we == USA") treat copyright law differently when applied to digital and analog media. It's really compelling, and somewhat disturbing. Good luck!

Re:Torches, anyone?

[renehollan]

Linux was never declared illegal or infringing.

Yet...

Re:Torches, anyone?

[David Gould]

Uhm...there's no difference between analog and digital media here, except that digital media is way easier to copy.

The underlying theme of the "it was OK for analog, but casual copying has no place in digital" argument that is common in the entertainment industry is really "with digital media, casual copying actually threatens my profits, so I'm against it".

Re:Torches, anyone?

[sg_oneill]

Absoulutely. The reason we should be worried is that the "Right to Read" (see RMS's article somewhere on FSF. He's often a bit of a nutter, but that article is required reading IMHO. It was Required reading in my Journalistic Ethics class btw). The ability to fairly access literature and research is fundamental to the progress of the modern world. Everyone (where physically possible) should have access to books and literature to encourage technological, spiritual and economic growth

This is at odds with "DRM" tech and god forbid if this tech ever really takes off it's education for the rich and serfdom for the poor.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[numbsafari]

The problem with your argument is that you are attacking the fact that these companies are trying to maximize profits. There's nothing immoral about that. The thing you should be attacking is that they are trying to protect their profits by stifling innovation by preventing better business models from taking hold. This prevents anyone from achieving maximum profits, in the end, and it hurts society.

Corporations' social obligation is to maximize profits, and when one corporation attempts to prevent the maximum profit from something it should be frowned upon. What's peculiar about this situation is that people continue to buy into it, even when it's quite obvious that the most profit can be derived from other means.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[benedict]

There's something to each side here. Digital content is easier to copy than analog; everyone knows that. The entertainment industry wants to make it harder to copy than analog, while the Slashdot endless-entitlement brigade wants it to remain easier to copy. No one is shooting for the old analog status quo, and it's not hard to see why: it would be an awfully arbitrary target, plus it's not obvious what a preservation of the status quo would even look like.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Chris Burke]

The problem with your argument is that you are attacking the fact that these companies are trying to maximize profits.There's nothing immoral about that. The thing you should be attacking is that they are trying to protect their profits by stifling innovation by preventing better business models from taking hold.

There is nothing immoral about the _desire_ to maximize profits, but there damn well can be immorality in the actions taken to achieve that goal. Dismissing moral concerns for the sake of profit is immoral.

And while it is true in this case that a better, more profitable busines model is available that doesn't involve destroying our rights, that really isn't the problem. The problem is the attempt to destroy our rights.

I have commonly heard the insanely simplistic notion that the free market and maximization of profit will result in nothing but benefit to the consumer, and make society a better place. This is as foolish as saying that the abolition of government will end oppression.

The fundamental problem with the view of profit being both the means and goal is that it is completely divorced from the supposed benefit to society. There is nothing in the "maximize profit" dogma that implies actions that benefit the people, only actions that maximize profit. And there are many instances where profit can be maximized be shafting the people. For example, if MS is successfull with their XP rentware licensing scheme, universal application of .NET and Passport, and elimination of competing OS's, they'd have unprecedented opportunity for profit without ever having to release a software upgrade or fix a bug again.

It reminds me of the argument that the southern states would have actually been better off financially without slavery when that's not the fucking point. There are competing theories that they were better off that way, and damned if that would make slavery ok!

Sorry if I ranted a lot, but I'm sick of this Capitalist Gnome logic:
1: Maximize Profit
2:
3: Utopia

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Danse]

No no no. The media industry is after much more than simply limiting our ability to copy digital works. They want all sorts of other types of control. They want to put time limits on how long we can view/hear a certain work. They want to put restrictions on where and when we can view/hear a particular work. They want to remove our ability to make personal copies and our ability to loan a book/movie/album to a friend. Hell, even making a copy for a friend is legal under copyright law. They are taking away our ability to exercise our fair use rights in many ways. Without access to tools that can decrypt a DVD, how is someone supposed to show a clip for a review or a class? This isn't even everything. As the previous post suggested, read Jessica Litman's book. I would add Lawrence Lessig's book, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" as well. Both are excellent for bringing oneself up to date on exactly what is going on here, and where it is leading us.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[benedict]

You are absolutely right. I wrote hastily and I wasn't even trying to speak comprehensively about the issues.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Sir_Real]

What is the first principle of engineering psychology (or interface design if I prefer)? "Non standard widgets, which are seen nowhere else, shall not exist?" I'm not a Microsoft fan boy, but face it: Their attention to detail (and consistency) in their interface and their move to write their software for the right hardware, was what put them ahead of linux in user base. Until Linux has a truly user friendly (drooler friendly) interface, (and maybe the designers will have to swallow some pride and COPY microsoft gui behavior in order to get it on enough desktops) it will never gain ground.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[mpe]

Uhm...there's no difference between analog and digital media here, except that digital media is way easier to copy.

In the sense of being able to create a copy which is identical to the original. As opposed to one which is identical for all practical purposes.
When it comes to pirating of films and music performances the quality typically isn't much of an issue. Considering that people can be quite happy with TV programmes which have been captured from broadcasts then subjectect to lossy compresssion.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[mpe]

There IS a difference between the way digital media and analog media is treated in copyright law - hard to believe, but true. When you buy a book, you have total control over the physical content of that book, and can use the full pantheon of fair use rights with that book.

Part of this would be due to the fact that the idea of treating the data and the media as separate entities is a modern one. Another part of it is that book publishing companies lost the case when they tried to impose "licences" which circumvented first sale doctorine about a century ago.

When you buy software, or a DVD, you do not have control over the media in question - see the DMCA. That's what's so shocking about the DMCA and digital IP laws being bandied about - and what's so terrifying about this MS patent.

At the root of this isn't so much an issue of digital vs analogue. It's rather the idea that in order to use such things as software it must be copied, hence there needs to be a licence. This "logic" has been applied to anything which postdates software. The argument works just as well with books, records, etc. But no-one would take it seriously in this context.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[mpe]

The media industry is after much more than simply limiting our ability to copy digital works. They want all sorts of other types of control. They want to put time limits on how long we can view/hear a certain work. They want to put restrictions on where and when we can view/hear a particular work.

Some of this, like controlling the when and where, is an attempt to perpetuate the status quo. (Which has resulted from a set of historical accidents in broadcast television, distribution of films and music media.)

They want to remove our ability to make personal copies and our ability to loan a book/movie/album to a friend.

There is another very disturbing effect here. If it is easy to make personal copies someone can bypass the existing publishing companies to make copies of their own work.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Rupert]

Is this still true? I know the latest version of Windows CE (formerly known as Talisker, now called CE.NET) has a feature called "Execute In Place" which I'm pretty sure means that the program is not copied into RAM.

Re:Torches, anyone?

[Ben Hutchings]

XIP is just a way of saving RAM. When a program is loaded from file-system that is itself in RAM, there's no need to make a second copy in RAM of those parts of the program image that are read-only.

This is good news...

[MadCow42]

That means that only one company will be enforcing DRM. For the rest of us using Mac, Linux, et al, we can simply go on about our business without the fear of being bossed around and controlled by Big Brother.

q:]

MadCow.

Re:This is good news...

[Wonda]

wasn't there some law proposal that would make all OSes that don't support this (digital rights management) illegal though?

nice way to force people into licensing your patent

Re:This is good news...

[reaper20]

Yeah, until most of the distribution/content sources begin using DRM, and then forcing all their artists, etc. to use DRM. Next thing you know, your new DVDs won't play on non Windows Media DVD players, because they are 'unlicensed' players.

Sure, there's a way around that, one could always hack that, until the DMCA rears its ugly head.

I don't think this can be good at all.

Re:This is good news...

[scaryjohn]

Yes, there was. The senator from south carolina who is not stom thurmund got put up to it. He backed down after it became aparent he didn't know what he was talking about. However, that's not to say that there won't be a similar, less broad legislation coming down the pipe (SSSCA could have applied to everything with a data input and a microprocessor).

SSSCA also said it would enforce a standard agreed-to or imposed upon by the commerce department... ol' senator hollings's staff didn't exactly do a patent search to check if a standard could get imposed upon the commerce department.

Apple would likely prefer to pay license fees to its minority owner, Microsoft anyway than leave the industry anyway.

... Must... Resist... Urge to flamebait...

Re:This is good news...

[The Night Watchman]

Very true. See, what's happening here is that a company, rather than a government institution, is enforcing "digital rights management". This is essentially Microsoft's way of ensuring that all digital media is Windows-compatible only, and given most people's general tendency to flock to whatever's popular, it looks like they have a good shot at succeeding. I have no doubt that MP3 is here to stay, it's just a question of how readily available they'll be to everyday users. The latest Media Player won't play MP3s at anything better than 56kbps, which sounds something like singing underwater over a telephone. I'm fairly certain that under the auspices of Digital Rights Management, we'll start to see Windows reject the installation attempts of CD rippers, and given the fact that Windows still dominates the desktop market, that will dramatically reduce MP3 availability.

Granted, as for MP3 players like Winamp, they'll still exist, and Microsoft will have a hard time justifying any restrictions placed on installing that. It is disturbing, however, that Microsoft is becoming analogous to a government entity, where it has the power to restrict and regulate the behavior and actions of its users.

Okay, so that makes me paranoid. And maybe what I'm suggesting is a bit over the top. But it's still interesting to think about how one company has become so powerful. Then again, I look at something like AOL Time-Warner. Microsoft controls our desktop computers, fine. AOL-TW controls television, record labels, movie studios, news networks, and internet news sites. Those are the things that steer public opinion and tell many folks out there how to think. But they're much more subtle about it. Besides, if the news services are corrupt, who's going to tell us about it?

Okay, I'll stop my overly paranoid rant. If y'all excuse me, I think I'll go etch a few more conspiracy theories on the men's room walls.

/* Steve */

Re:This is good news...

[laertes]

That means that only one company will be enforcing DRM.

Let us think about what that means. First, I assume by 'one company,' you really mean 'one operating system family.' Second, you're assuming that it will remain legal to have a non-DRM operating system. This may not continue to be the case; there is no legislation that bans non-DRM operating systems currently, but such legislation has been proposed in the past. Further, the media lobying efforts are heavily directed to getting such legislation.

Regarding the current congress and administation, there is cause for concern. It is likely that a law requiring a DRM compliant operating system would get passed, especially if it can be presented as an economic aid. The source of the worry is that Microsoft will certainly not license this "technology" to any other operating system authors. The inevitable patent battle means the world will end up with a total, unadulterated Microsoft operating system monopoly. This monopoly could be levered into all areas of software; cell phones, PDAs, routers, firewalls, basically any computing environment which can operate on the Internet.

Then again, maybe I'm just being paranoid.

Re:This is good news...

[Computer!]

Or, if Apple and Sun sell out, we can just count on our buddies from overseas. Microsoft doesn't control the whole world, just the USA.

Re:This is good news...

[clontzman]

The latest Media Player won't play MP3s at anything better than 56kbps, which sounds something like singing underwater over a telephone.

Uh... bullshit. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, the latest Media Player will play any MP3 you want. If you install a third party MP3 encoder, it'll encode any MP3 you want at any data rate the encoder supports. Might want to recheck the facts there.

Re:This is good news...

[IronChef]

Apple would likely prefer to pay license fees to its minority owner, Microsoft anyway than leave the industry anyway.

Microsoft bought $150M of non-voting Apple stock, which is a pittance to a company of Apple's size -- they have something like $4B in the bank and a hell of a lot of shares out there. I have read that MS even sold that stock off, so they have *no* investment in Apple. Calling them a minority owner is, well, just really wrong. Even when they owned some Apple stock they had no additional pull.

If you were humorously referring to the way that Apple caves in to Microsoft for other reasons, that's another story, but that is not how it came across.

Re:This is good news...

[Tackhead]

> I would imagine something a cross between gates, rosen, and kobrin

I dunno, if we get Daddy Gates' money, transmute Rosen's lust for power into lust for something else, and Helena's, uh, legal expertise, it could be kinda fun.

Heck, if Gates' daughter turns out to be good-looking, we might not even need the paper bags for our heads.

Of course, knowing our luck, we'd get Gates' lust, Rosen's skills, and Kobrin's looks. Maybe it's better not to find out.

Re:This is good news...

[Arandir]

The degree to which the Goverment can restrict and regulate the People is strictly a function of the People's desire to be regulated

Close, but not quite. Here is how it should be worded: "The degree to which the Government can restrict and regulate the People is strictly a function of the People's desire to regulate other people's behavior". It's tyranny of the majority. If you're in the minority, just find some majority you can join and start oppressing someone else. No one wants laws passed that directly affect themselves, but all too many are happy to get laws that directly affect some group they aren't a member of.

Re:This is good news...

[mpe]

Here is how it should be worded: "The degree to which the Government can restrict and regulate the People is strictly a
function of the People's desire to regulate other people's behavior". It's tyranny of the majority.

In practice the "majority" may well in practice be either the largest or most vocal minority anyway. (Where people are indifferent to an issue the tend to simply be ignored..)

Re:This is good news...

[mpe]

The prospect of their entire intellectual property structure being under US control would raise red flags immediately.

Possibly not if it were done slowly enough and the actual purpose was obscruated enough.

From my perspective (in Australia) I think the US is a lost cause as long as Bush is president.

Do you think that it would have made much difference had Gore been president?

Re:This is good news...

[mpe]

The SSSCA would've applied to ANYTHING with a digital logic gate. I don't recall seeing anything about processors or state machines in there. It was just anything "digital".

In which case the best solution would be to simply lock up anyone advocating it for operating a non SSSCA complient digital system :)

So doesn't it mean...

[Alex Belits]

...that not only ??AA executives believe that everyone should license everything from them only in some "copy-protected" form, the only way to actually make those restrictions actually restrict anything is by licensing some piece of shit from Microsoft?

How long til -THIS- is cracked . . .

[MaxwellStreet]

Honestly ...

Given the continuous stream of security holes found in Microsoft software, how can they honestly believe that they will be able to securely protect -any- digital content for long?

Granted, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but throwing the gauntlet to the community like this is only begging for the system to be torn apart - DMCA be damned.

Got to give them points for hubris, though.

Re:How long til -THIS- is cracked . . .

[mpe]

Given the continuous stream of security holes found in Microsoft software, how can they honestly believe that they will be able to securely protect -any- digital content for long?

But remember that those who find the holes will be "terrorists".
Maybe then there will be a "war on hackers" to add to the "war on terrorism" and "war on drugs"...

Well,

[Gannoc]

This patent was filed January 8, 1999, so this is kind of old news, but hey, I'm always up for bashing MS...

Its also not unexpected. Microsoft wants to make their OS the only one that can read digital media. Then they can convince companies to only release media in MS format. Then maybe, as a bonus, they can get Linux declared illegal as a circumvention device!

Re:Well,

[TwP]

This is news because the patent was granted.

The patent should not stand, though, since we already have prior art from the NSA. The Microsoft patent seems to be a subset of the development work done by the NSA. It focuses mainly on digital rights management whereas the NSA secure OS project would apply to all applications and data types, not just DRM.

Re:Well,

[Eryq]

Then maybe, as a bonus, they can get Linux declared illegal as a circumvention device!

I wish this were just a joke, but thanks to the DMCA it may not be. Don't be surprised to hear Redmond begin to attack Linux more publically (and before Congress) as

• a "hacker's OS",
• a "lawbreaker's OS",
• a "cyber-theft tool",
• a "favorite of cyber-terrorists",
• a "threat to the economic security of the U.S.

If the DMCA becomes firmly entrenched (so that it is as taken for granted as, say, the law which says you can't operate a car without a license) , MS will simply drift all its protocols/formats into new proprietary and copyrighted ones which it will be a crime to reverse-engineer.

At least, that's what I'd do if I were an evil megalomaniacal SOB (or even if I were just running a publically-held company with a lot of powerful shareholders).

Re:Well,

[alsta]

I was under the impression that government work could never be patented at all since it is funded by tax payers.

One ring to rule them all

[Jeremy Erwin]

Step 1:
Get Sen Ernest Hollings (D-SC), to propose requiring OS's to use DMA.
Step 2:
Patent this concept.
Step 3:
Given enough cash/campaign contributions/graft, the OS design suggested in Step 1 will be developed.
Step 4: Microsoft, having patented this OS design, eliminates the competition, and rakes in cash.

Re:One ring to rule them all

[TwP]

Couldn't the secure OS port of Linux being developed by the NSA be extended a little bit to include DRM? It seems that DRM applications are just a subset of applications requiring a secure operating system environment. And, since it is the federal government developing the software, Microsoft could not sue for patent enfringement ;)

For that matter, is the NSA's secure Linux project an example of prior art in this case? The MS patent is fairly specific about memory allocation and long term storage. Does the secure OS project implement memory wiping/protection? If it does, then by all means it is prior art!

Re:One ring to rule them all

[aralin]

Get Sen Ernest Hollings (D-SC), to propose requiring OS's to use DMA.

Already my ATARI 800 XL used to have OS that used DMA (direct memory access) for various purposes. Maybe you meant DRM (digital rights management) ?

Re:One ring to rule them all

[Cato the Elder]

It's not neccessarily all that bad.

I think this patent makes (1) less likely--sure Microsoft has deep pockets, but this obvious a giveaway would be hard to justify and garuntee lots of opposition dollars from every other OS manufacturer and most industry groups.

Microsoft will be the only developer of DRM in the OS. Looking at the security record of their products, bugs will continue to ensure that fair use is possible (and piracy, but hey, the content companies made that bed).

Eventually, the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft will all go down. We will all live happily ever after in a new age of the world. Or something like that.

Re:One ring to rule them all

[benedict]

You don't need a law for that. On a PC, any OS that doesn't use DMA will be sluggish as hell, and its users will patch it if they can, or abandon it if they can't.

;-)

I think the rope is long enough now.

[AgTiger]

They (Microsoft) can stop weaving the rope they intend to hang themselves with. It's plenty long.

I won't support *any* operating system that treats the data as having more important concerns than the machine's operator (me).

Buying Microsoft anymore is like saying: Please, treat me like a two year old, stifle my creativity and learning, keep me in the dark and feed me crap, and whatever you do, don't let me question your 'authority'.

Disgustedly,

Re:I think the rope is long enough now.

[DecoDragon]

I won't support *any* operating system that treats the data as having more important concerns than the machine's operator (me).

Understood. Looking at it from a different angle, it is interesting that MS can put money into this, so that as a consumer I'm forced to pay to protect somebody else's data, but they don't provide the same the same option for me to protect my own data. We're continuously offered default installations that necessitate following lengthy check-lists for a secure install. As a few other people pointed out - if you take away the 'digital rights management' it sounds a hell of a lot like 'trusted operating system.' Had they put in the patent that a user could tag their own data to be protected in this way, perhaps the patent office might have viewed the idea as being a little to familiar. Not having read more than the abstract, perhaps I'm jumping the gun, and missing something that makes this unique. But, as a network administrator I would be interested in a system that viewed appropriately classified organizational or personal information (think on the server) as more important than the machine user.

There's always a way in.

[siliconvortex]

If the hardware resides in my house, there will always be a fix. It may require paperclip jumpers and sacrificing chickens, but there will be a way to access data that is in memory or in some form on the computer.

Re:There's always a way in.

[OmegaDan]

I think the RIAA just sacrifices more virgins per year then we do :)

Re:There's always a way in.

[Tackhead]

> I think the RIAA just sacrifices more virgins per year then we do :)

Naaw, there's no profit in screwing over unknown artists for the first, and possibly only, time.

The big profits come from fucking the same big-selling artists over and over again.

Re:There's always a way in.

[Rogerborg]

• will be a way to access data that is in memory or in some form on the computer.

Good for you! You've bought DRM protected hardware, with a DRM protected Microsoft OS and you've bought (more likely rented) DRM protected content and managed to turn into raw form. Well done! Now, what exactly are you going to do with it?

We're ten years down the line. The Son of SSSCA has passed based on a lobbying campaign that asserts that terrorist organisations use content piracy to fuel their activities. The only hardware you can buy is DRM enabled. The only OS's you can legally use are DRM enabled. Microsoft owns the patent on DRM OS's. They refuse to license it. Every piece of consumer electronics that you - legally - own is DRM enabled and powered by Microsoft. You've applied for a license to run Linux for research purposes, but have failed to prove your innocence and are refused.

You've got raw data and nothing to play it on. Now what?

crack

[eyeball]

Does this mean I can patent the inevitable CrackDRM.exe?

We have seen the Future

[Alien54]

Welcome to Microsoft Planet, folks.

Maybe some folks will not only like, but will love this stuff.

Obviously this is intended to bew the final solution to pesky little things like user free will and responsibility.

the RIAA, etc are just going to lap this up.

Fortunately, the move to open source and Linux is picking up speed. As seen in this report in the Government Technology Mag many governments are looking in Linux for reasons of their national security.

While many folks like a comfy life, there are many that do not want the "comfy sofa technique" and who will rebel just because somebody says that they have to have things a certain way.

This keeps up, and I'll get ready to join "geeks with guns"

Supply and demand

[Reckless Visionary]

Look, don't blame Microsoft. If companies and organizations are clamoring for digital rights management software, software companies are going to produce it. Microsoft didn't go to the RIAA and say, "Hey, people are stealing your music, don't you want some digital rights management solutions?" The fact is if you don't want this type of thing occuring, your going to have to go after the content providers and your legislators, not the company supplying a requested product.

Re:Supply and demand

[Captain_Frisk]

...but consumers / end users are not. Think about it.

true... but most of the "end users" who are seriously opposed to this technology aren't paying for MS software anyway, so MS doesn't care.

I hate the idea of not owning my content as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to bitch and whine because MS isn't going to help me fight. Why on earth should they? If they get DRM to work properly, they can stop everyone from pirating their SW.

I don't think its possible, but we'll see.

Captain_Frisk out.

Re:Supply and demand

[dachshund]

Microsoft didn't go to the RIAA and say, "Hey, people are stealing your music, don't you want some digital rights management solutions?"

In point of fact, Microsoft did go to the RIAA and say that. They made a concerted effort to sell their Windows Media DRM solution, as did IBM and a bunch of other people. DRM solutions were the next big thing at the time, and nobody knew that the music industry was gonna drop the ball on it so completely. Microsoft just had enough money and patience to continue the selling, long after the competition began to flag.

It's not a terribly big point to make, though, as Microsoft really is just responding to content-providers' demands by producing integrated DRM systems. The problem is, what's in the content-providers' interest is not necessarily what's good for their customers-- and as MS is a monopoly, there's not much that the customers can do about it. It worries me when a monopoly teams up with a Cartel and starts building features like DRM into a monopoly-product. The consequences can be dire for smaller competitors in the music and software business, not to mention the end-user.

Re:Supply and demand

[Reckless Visionary]

Is the RIAA Microsoft's customer.

Yes, they are. In order for DRM to work, technology must be used by the content providers to make their content secure. This is what they are customers of. The only reason it's in the end-user OS is so the DRM technology will be of any attractiveness to the content providers.

Re:Supply and demand

[Tackhead]

> Noone's going to upgrade from 98 or XP if the OS blows.

As much as I hope you're right, that's what we said about DOS 3.3, Win3.1, and Win95.

Re:Supply and demand

[KarmaBlackballed]

Look, don't blame Microsoft. If companies and organizations are clamoring for digital rights management software

That misses the point. Companies should be able to create any software they think the market will support. The problem here is not with Microsoft, rather, it is that we have another example of fundemental computer science application granted monopoly rights by our friendly patent system.

Can't blame the companies when they are using our own laws to screw us.

Re:Supply and demand

[Jason Earl]

This is precisely the type of thing that is likely to doom Microsoft. A significant portion of the computer using public (at least here in the United States) actively participates in some sort of grey market file sharing. They either "borrow" a copy of MS Office from work, or they casually swap MP3 on Kazaa, or engage in any number of similar activities. Most of the people I know are actually shocked when I tell them I never downloaded music from Napster, and that the software on my computer is all 100% legal (thank you Debian). These people don't consider themselves dishonest, and they certainly don't consider themselves to be pirates. This trend is even worse in the rest of the world. I have lived in countries where it was almost impossible to find legal copies of software (and the illegal copies are on every street corner). Microsoft and the content providers can wish that this wasn't the case, but it isn't likely to do them any good.

There would be a huge sea change in the Home PC market if Microsoft actually started clamping down on these types of activities. In fact, DRM might actually be Linux's killer application. Right now a fifteen-year-old has to be pretty geeky to be interested in Linux. If using Linux was the only way to share music with their friends then a whole pile of PCs would become Linux boxes overnight.

Contrary to what many people think, Linux is quite useable as a desktop right this minute. If Microsoft were to clamp down hard, their market share would disappear overnight.

Re:Supply and demand

[Jason Earl]

If Microsoft was actually successful in stopping pirates then their software empire would crumble overnight. The only reason that most home users aren't taking a harder look at the low cost of Free Software is that they are already getting their software for free. They simply borrow a copy of MS Office (or whatever) from work. If Microsoft actually started clamping down and making sure that everyone actually ponied up $400 for MS Office folks would start looking around for alternatives.

They would soon find that alternatives like Corel's PerfectOffice and Sun's StarOffice are vastly less expensive, and instead of mailing Word documents around like crazy we would start to see other formats become more common.

I would bet that Microsoft is extracting just about as much money from their software as they possibly can. Businesses buy Microsoft software because it is "standard," but it was made the standard by normal end users who wanted something less expensive than WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3.

So here's wishing that Microsoft clamps down on software Piracy.

Re:Supply and demand

[mpe]

In order for DRM to work, technology must be used by the content providers to make their content secure. This is what they are customers of. The only reason it's in the end-user OS is so the DRM technology will be of any attractiveness to the content providers.

However "content provider" in this context most likely means exclusivly the existing large corps who publish.
Not for example so a band trying to get a recording deal could protect their demo tapes/CDs from being ripped off by some RIAA member...

Good news

[Jobe_br]

If a company has a patent for creating a DRM OS, then the SSSCA can't possibly pass, right? That would create an instant monopoly, if I understand broadly what's going on here.

Either that, or Microsoft would have to license the patented technology on a royalty-free basis, which for Microsoft's uses, makes it rather useless, right?

Re:Good news

[Tachys]

Didn't the SSSCA had a clause saying something about an anti-trust exception?

Actually, this might be bad

[Mdog]

This reminds me of the the stuff on /. a while ago about the patenting of building codes. What if Microsoft is able to push through a law (sssca) that requires OSes to use DRM, and then they have the patent?

Yes this sounds silly, but 5 years ago a web browser built into the OS sounded silly. MS: Turning silly into reality.

Re:Actually, this might be bad

[Chris Burke]

MS: Turning silly into reality.

How true. Just 5 years ago I was laughingly telling my computer-naive friends that nothing like the "Good Times" virus could ever exist... and then came Melissa.

But that was amuzing... this is frightening.

Not really that innovative.

[autopr0n]

This wouldn't be that hard to do, not any harder then making a user secure OS like Linux, OpenBSD or, in theory Windows NT/2k/XP.

I mean, just add 'copy' to the things you can do with a file (like read, write, execute). If it can't be copied, then only allow DRM compliant programs (all digitally signed by M$ of course) to open them. Easy easy. Of course, this can't really stop you from accessing the data if you have physical access to the machine, any more then Linux and Open BSD can protect your data from hacking if the hackers (or, say the FBI) has unlimited physical access to the machine.

On the other hand, throw in DRM certified hard drives and sound cards (perhaps a DRM OS would not allow non-certified hardware to run. Perhaps with a Nintendo-style Lockout chip even). And you create one tough nut to crack. Basically you've got to turn the wide open PC into a closed box. As long as you've got good memory protection, it's not hard at all. (Just like how your Linux box is 'closed' to people without root access).

Anyway, it doesn't say anywhere that MS will do this, though given their apparent stance on copyrights and the like, it wouldn't surprise me (you can't even save Mpeg files in the new media player. What a crock)

I have to say this passage from the patent I found humorous though.

Piracy of digital content, especially online digital content, is not yet a great problem. Most premium content that is available on the Web is of low value, and therefore casual and organized pirates do not yet see an attractive business stealing and reselling content. Increasingly, though, higher-value content is becoming available. Books and audio recordings are available now, and as bandwidths increase, video content will start to appear.

(and wrong. I've been snagging movies off the net (and no, not just pr0n) for years.)

Re:Not really that innovative.

[Spy Hunter]

I mean, just add 'copy' to the things you can do with a file (like read, write, execute).

Only that wouldn't work because as long as you can read a file, you can duplicate it. The OS can't really check to see if the bits you're writing to disk are the same ones you just read from another file or not.

I don't think real DRM schemes can actually be reasonably uncrackable unless there's specialized hardware involved. And then, if someone somewhere *ever* cracks it, it can't be fixed.

Re:Not really that innovative.

[mpe]

Copyright infringement on the Internet is a people's movement. It undercuts commercial pirates just as much as, if not more than, it affects "legit" providers of Intellectual Property.

You also have a sort of "viewer globalization" whereby films and television programmes are being traded primarily because people arn't prepared to wait for months to years to see what they want to see. Which also means that most people don't want things like DVD region codes either.
The only way to deal with this would be by simaltanious worldwide release. Also for televison series available for broadcast within 24 hours of their first broadcast. (Possibly with people in Australia, Europe & Asia being able to see an episode before America also for the non serial way series are shown in North America to be consigned to history.)

That's great!

[corebreech]

Anybody who's thought through DRM knows it's pure shit. The key's going to live in the box, and somebody, somewhere, is going to find it.

And even assuming the key won't be retrievable, unencrypted content will be available at some point along the path from where the bits live to how my brain gets the input.

Let MS invest billions into this nonsense. It'll get cracked before it's out of beta, just like everything else they do.

Re:That's great!

[corebreech]

I mean, to really do DRM right, we need to be where Ray Kurzweil says we'll be in twenty years or so, with nanobots running around in our heads directly feeding our brains with analog-encoded digital input (or something.)

Every nanobot is going to have to verify the digital signature of its source, and then maybe, just maybe, DRM will have a clear, unrestricted path from the bits to my neurons. Maybe.

I mean, it's easy to envision having other nanobots loose in my head too, there for no other reason than to pirate the signal, yes?

Information wants to be free. And dammit, that's the way it's gonna be, no matter how many idiots you pay to make it otherwise!

Re:That's great!

[morgue-ann]

somebody, somewhere, is going to find it.

Consider digital cable set-top boxes (Scientific-Atlanta Explorers and Motorola DCTs). Security still unbroken.

Private key is inside a secure micro that is never supposed to give it up. It only decrypts session keys (which change every few seconds so can't effectively be shared).

It's true that at this point the unencrypted content is in the clear on a couple of memory busses (possibly mixed with a lot of other traffic), but the content tends to be ABC, HBO and pay-per-view movies. In other words, not that valuable. The important thing is securing the access for folks that don't pay not the content for those who do.

In any case, set-tops-on-a-chip like Broadcom's mean that the CPU and MPEG decoder are on the same die. Moving the DENC (digital to analog converter for video) onto the MPEG decoder eliminated one exposed path & this will eliminate some others. They'll have to get embedded DRAM on the chip to really make it secure though. Then it'll be output of the QAM decoder in, analog video out.

These techniques can be used for PCs too. Soundcards are just the beginning-- look for secure CPUs, hard disks and video cards in the future.

-M

Re:That's great!

[roystgnr]

Anybody who's thought through DRM knows it's pure shit. The key's going to live in the box, and somebody, somewhere, is going to find it.

Are you sure? I don't see an XBox distribution of Linux yet. If they put out the hardware as well, Microsoft can indeed prevent unauthorized software access to or emulation of it's systems. They are practicing right now.

To be backwards compatible with the PC, of course, they'll have to be able to run unsigned software... but it won't run as "root", so it won't be able to access the media encryption keys or the unencrypted data in RAM that Microsoft-signed DRM applications will.

The XBox is their first try at this, to see what the holes are. My personal prediction is that someone will managed to get Linux booting by finding an buffer overflow in a signed game and using that to get hardware access... and Microsoft will find some way (like mandatory regular software updates that can "untrust" hackable DRM programs) to get around that, too.

And even assuming the key won't be retrievable, unencrypted content will be available at some point along the path from where the bits live to how my brain gets the input.

True. With music, there's no way they're going to be able to prevent you from soldiering 16 bit DACs into your speakers and recovering CD-quality sound on each channel. With video you can't get perfect reproduction that way, but do you think people won't be happy with just VHS quality?

Let MS invest billions into this nonsense. It'll get cracked before it's out of beta, just like everything else they do.

Of course, I'm sure Microsoft knows this. But the entertainment industry may not, and Congress doesn't have a clue. If the difficulty of ripping music and video only adds a week lag before it hits the internet, but if legal and economic attempts to prevent that mean Microsoft has root access to a closed box in every home, how sad do you really think they're going to be?

Read the patent

[aralin]

All it says is that they patented to protect memory of threads that are flagged as manipulating DRM content basicly the same thing any serious operating system does for all threads :)

Its interesting though to read the means of it. It will erase data from a memory page when some 'trusted' process would try to access this memory page. (Instead of just logically denying the access maybe?)

They just patented being stupid on large scale.

Re:Read the patent

[Sand_Man]

I did read the patent and it says "the digital rights management operating system refuses to load an untrusted program into memory while the trusted application is executing." It isn't protecting the thread, it is refusing to load a program based on "trust." Not MY trust, mind you, but (I assume) M$'s trust. Thanks, but I think I would like to be the one who decides what loads on my machines and what is "trusted."

And how is this "trust" established? Seems to be based on licensing, and we know how licensing is handled as M$ with XP these days. Sure, go ahead and link up to www.M$.net and share what I have and what I want to use and let me know what M$ "trusts."

Summary of a DRM OS

[twoflower]

A digital rights management operating system protects rights-managed data, such as downloaded content, from access by untrusted programs while the data is loaded into memory or on a page file as a result of the execution of a trusted application that accesses the memory. To protect the rights-managed data resident in memory, the digital rights management operating system refuses to load an untrusted program into memory while the trusted application is executing or removes the data from memory before loading the untrusted program. If the untrusted program executes at the operating system level, such as a debugger, the digital rights management operating system renounces a trusted identity created for it by the computer processor when the computer was booted. To protect the rights-managed data on the page file, the digital rights management operating system prohibits raw access to the page file, or erases the data from the page file before allowing such access. Alternatively, the digital rights management operating system can encrypt the rights-managed data prior to writing it to the page file. The digital rights management operating system also limits the functions the user can perform on the rights-managed data and the trusted application, and can provide a trusted clock used in place of the standard computer clock.

So, basically you're screwed. If you load any software they don't approve of, the OS itself will prevent you from accessing any protected content, and any programs which _can_ access the protected content. Looks like something designed to prevent situations similar to the current DRM "fix" programs.

Twoflower

Re:Summary of a DRM OS

[Boulder Geek]

This little feature also has the effect of killing third party debugging tools for Windows. How amusing.

Re:Summary of a DRM OS

[Tackhead]

> So how are they going to prevent my Linux, Solaris, and MacOs utilities from reading raw data off my DRM-DOS hard disk when I don't BOOT DRM-DOS?

Sector-level weak crypto on the data to your DRM-DOS partition, followed by arrests under DMCA for reverse-engineering the crypto.

Reverse-engineering FAT-DRM crypto "for purposes of interoperability" is a defence in court, not a right.

Note that interoperability is a defence under DMCA, not a right.

So even if it was for purposes of interoperability ("Your Honor, I wrote it because I couldn't read my_thesis.doc on my Linux box, and as a student, I can't afford another WinDRM license for that box, so this was the only way I could use both computers to help me with my thesis!"), you'd have the fun of being arrested, tried, and as soon as the DA used the words "l33t d00dz of the j00ry, this man is a h4x0r!", losing the case and going to jail.

Re:Summary of a DRM OS

[ddent]

Gee, this sounds an awful lot like how different processes can not access each other, and how "chmod 600" works... hmm....

Re:Summary of a DRM OS

[mpe]

If you load any software they don't approve of, the OS itself will prevent you from accessing any protected content, and any programs which _can_ access the protected content. Looks like something designed to prevent situations similar to the current DRM "fix" programs.

This is only remotly workable if you do it with blackbox hardware which cannot be altered in anyway. With the hardware physically incapable of running anything else (otherwise all it takes is one NMI and the machine is no longer running the DRM-OS, but still has the supposely protected data or an application which can read it memory resident) and the DRM-OS being utterly incapable of running as some kind of virtual machine.
Indeed for a DRM-OS you probably don't want an OS with separate "applications". You want the whole thing to be one utterly monolithic entity... Even more monolithic than the sort of things Microsoft comes up with now. i.e. no dynamic loading of any kind of modules. (Unstructured, but bug free, code might also be desirable here. Such that even if anyone can use a debugger it's hard to work out what is going on.)

Virtual Machine

[Ryu2]

The ultimate way to circumvent any DRM stuff would be to use some virtual machine emulator that emulated everything, hardware, etc, down to the register/port level. Unless they move the DRM down to the level of the individual DACs in audio or video circuitry, this, we can simply intercept any hardware stream (digital audio, video. etc).

Any protection that the OS has is invalid, because the OS just think's it's running on a normal machine.

Re:Virtual Machine

[Znork]

I dont think this would be a problem. The 'trusted' OS _is_ running, and you would allow it to deal with the handshaking.

As long as you have control of the hardware you can bullshit the OS running in a virtual machine all you want, up to inserting false responses, editing its own code, reading out the VM system (since the reads of the VM system would take place outside the context of the virtualized OS it wouldnt even know they were happening).

Of course, the fact that anyone (well, any total geek) wanting to could run in circles around this type of DRM doesnt actually solve anything since it wouldnt be exactly totally legal in some countries.

So either way, a DRM future is something that has to be avoided.

Re:Actually, the very next patch of OSX.1...

[reaper20]

it intimated that both RedHat and at least one other producer of linux is on board with includinging it in ISO and store stream media releases.

Please provide a link to this, this just sounds absurd.

Ahh sweet sweet world domination

[RobPiano]

Now that we know their plan for world domination isn't superman suppost to come out and kick some ass?

Well I'm sure they'll get what's comming to them in court, in the mean time I'm waiting for that $12k check I'm going to get for forwarding this e-mail to 10 people.

Good Grief!
Rob

"Refuses to load an untrustd application"

[Kz]

Obviously, that means they can control which program you use on windows! of course, it's not your machine, it's their OS!

it's supposed to first unload 'sensitive data' and/or stop 'trusted applications'... but the trusted application will be your mouse driver, and the sensitive data is the page swap table

that's it! the perfect excuse so nobody can play on their backyard

Re:Big Brother Gates

[jmccay]

We need to get Linux up to speed to meet the bare minimum of user requirements. Then we need to market it. Slogan like "You want to create you own cd with just songs you like... Well, you can't on the latest Microsoft Operating System because the have DRM (and a patent on it too!), but can because we can't do DRM because Microsoft has a patent on the technology!"

This could be a great opportunity for other Operating Systems! You know we'll have fun with the slogans the marketers come up with to sell the product!

The Emperor Has No Clothes

[pbryan]

Unfortunately, as many crypto and media format experts have pointed out, it is impossible to truly protect content from being copied without authorization.

If someone can view it, someone will find a way to copy it. If a watermark is imperceptable to a person, it can be compressed out without anyone noticing a difference in quality.

These are based on the laws of mathematics and physics. Try as they might, the content owners and their representatives will never be able to change these immutable facts.

Unfortunately, law makers don't believe in the laws of physics or mathematics, only their own laws. When will the emperor discover that he has no clothes?

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes

[Verteiron]

It won't really matter because the emperor has already passed laws banning anyone to use their eyes to determine the absence of said clothes. Therefore, anyone who laughs at the emperor's nudity must have used their eyes to see it, and thus will be incarcerated.

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes

[(void*)]

I, the Baron Rupert of the Southwest Barony, and most loyal subject of the Holy Emporer, hereby invite his royal Highness to journey to my Castle during this winter seaon. I humbly request that his Highness don for our subject's admiration and respect, his most exquisite Clothes, that we may feast our eyes upon it's granmdeur and marvel at the sovereign designs upon his royal gown and garb.

Re:The Emperor Has No Clothes

[mpe]

f someone can view it, someone will find a way to copy it. If a watermark is imperceptable to a person, it can be compressed out without anyone noticing a difference in quality.

Wonder how much of the material which is captured from broadcast TV comes complete with various DOGs. Which are a lot more noticable than any kind of "watermark". Quality is rarely an issue with pirated material. Especially when the choice is between someone being able to view something they want to see anyway now or some time in the future when either a local TV station can be bothered to broadcast or the film is actually released. (In some cases this would be a wait of several years.)

Unfortunately, law makers don't believe in the laws of physics or mathematics, only their own laws. When will the emperor discover that he has no clothes?

Are today's law makers any less laughable at times than those who in the past attempted to define PI as equating to 3?

If only they invested in security...

[mr3038]

...as much as in rights management. I mean "To protect the rights-managed data on the page file, the digital rights management operating system prohibits raw access to the page file, or erases the data from the page file before allowing such access." Does this sound like safe or what? I simply have to wonder who's going to code this when you consider all the security bugs seen in MS apps lately.

Now all we need is "You need to login .Net Passport Service before viewing this movie." Welcome to the Microsoft(R) Planet(TM)!

If that's true...

[truthsearch]

The patent claims the following:

17. A computer system comprising:

a processing unit;

a system memory coupled to the processing unit through a system bus;

a computer-readable medium coupled to the processing unit through a system bus; and

a digital rights management operating system executed from the computer-readable medium by the processing unit, wherein the digital rights management operating system causes the processor to create a trusted identity for the digital rights management operating system.

I interpret that to mean that if XP contains DRM capabilities, then the entire computer it's on is patented. If that's the case, they can theoretically force computer manufacturers to pay royalties for licensing this patent. I'm sure I must be getting this a little confused, but this part 17 really sounds crazy...

Not exactly

[autopr0n]

Microsoft can license this patent to whomever they want. Apple will probably buy one, if it becomes popular (can't be the 'leading' AV OS if your OS can't read the most common digital formats). Sun and other UNIX vendors could license it as well. I doubt we'll ever see this on Linux. Unless crap like the SSSCA or whatever become real.

so how about VMWare / bocs / plex86...?

[edhill]

So I just have to ask:

How secure would a Windows DRMOS be if it
were run inside some sort of VM environment
where the DRMOS wasn't the host OS?

Sounds like, unless you can lock down the
hardware (XBox, perhaps?), *someone* will
relatively easily find a way to look at
the content in cleartext...

Re:Um, you're surprised?

[Chris Burke]

Well, I can tell you that any such OS would need hardware support, and the patent may cover an OS assuming such hardware.

Second, I don't think we can get the press to drop the ridiculous term "Digital Rights Management" because the more realistic term "Consumer Ass-Fucking" would fly in the NYT.

If I understand it correctly...

[_Ash_]

Microsoft has already experimented with this technique. They implemented the Secure Audio Path in Windows ME (it also part of Windows XP) which ensures that the music reaches the sound card on a computer and is not diverted to an unauthorized application, according to this article on MSDN.

Re:If I understand it correctly...

[cduffy]

Heh. Wonder what happens when someone builds a sound card that looks like a SB16 clone (chosen because its API is well understood and probably wouldn't be too hard to emulate) but provides an OOB means of reading pre-DAC'd audio.

If the user controls the hardware, there's always a way...

Stupid laws sure to follow

[The Dev]

You do realize the next step after this is to pass a law forbidding operating systems without DRM? I'm sure they could word it so that a requirement is that the source for the DRM is not published thereby violating GPL. This law, were it to be enacted would essentially make Linux/*BSD illegal and no longer a threat to MS.

Don't think it can happen? Never underestimate the power of stupid laws.

Re:Stupid laws sure to follow

[Eryq]

I agree. Fortunately, there are several
flies in the ointment for MS if this is their
goal:

For one thing, IBM and some other major players don't want to see Linux fail (have you seen the IBM TV ads touting Linux servers?). If the law requires DRM software, then some moneyed interests will provide. The penguin will not fall on a technicality.

Second: the U.S. is not the world (the chilling caveat here is the new universal copyright enforcement).

Third: Apple's OS X is basically BSD under the hood. So I'll bet there'll be DRM for BSD.

I still don't get software patents

[EccentricAnomaly]

I thought the point of patents was to prevent inventions from being secret and give the inventor protection if the inventor discloses his/her idea to the public. Doesn't that mean you should have to include the source code of software in a patent?

This patent is just a bunch of baseless claims.. hey I'll patent my secret fusion device and not tell anyone how it works... cuz it's secret....

With software patents this easy, some company should just sit around and brainstorm ideas for possible software and then patent the idea for the software without ever developing it... Just patent as many ideas as you can out of science fiction books...

Re:I still don't get software patents

[jonabbey]

Actually, this patent is a detailed road map explaining exactly how control over our computers will be taken away from us. It has some nicely done points, including the need for a secure time source, but I imagine that the secure time source point is not novel to this patent.

The system as a whole seems fairly obviously to be what you need to do if you want to have a secure DRM system, and I imagine that anyone with 'Skill in the art' would come around to this same basic layout if they applied themselves to it, but Microsoft got the patent first. Will make it quite hard for anyone else who wants to host media on their systems (including Linux/BSD users), but credit to them for getting this in to the PTO. Any OS vendor could have patented this, and it wouldn't have taken a lot of foresight to see the necessity for this sort of thing. Microsoft was on the ball more than the others, that's all.

Of course, there's the whole problem about getting the horse to drink, but that's for a later day.

Re:I still don't get software patents

[EccentricAnomaly]

Process patents claim a "process which uses a computer."

This sounds like a way to patent basic mathematical algorithms without disclosing how they work. What is calculus was developed in modern times? Sounds like the process of taking a simple derivative or integral would be patentable... heck sounds like "zero" would be patentable...

Only physical "inventions" should be patentable... patenting algorithms is akin to patenting a plot device in a novel.

did he say software patents, what is that?

[Vspirit]

spoken like a European :0)

I know I'm way off base, but so is the patent.

You fuck head.

[autopr0n]

Microsoft came out against that law the (SSSCA). Jesus. It was Disney and Fox and other motion picture companies that backed the law. Virtually everyone in the tech industry balked at it. Including MS

Check mate!

[sterno]

So if the government mandates DRM in all electronics, and Microsoft holds the patent on putting DRM in operating systems, that's pretty much the end of the road. Anything that uses an operating system (read anything that plugs into a wall these days) will have to go pay Microsoft for the right to exist.

Granted that's assuming that DRM requirements get passed which hopefull won't happen, but it is an interesting position for Microsoft to be in.

Re:Check mate!

[bfree]

Until an Asian (or European or African or South American or ...) Linux Distro adds support. I have an election coming up in my country soon and I can't wait to ask the politicians about Digital Rights Management (they'll see XXX Software Limited in the doorway I'll be talking to them at so I'm sure they'll be all for it). God help the poor sods (I think I may need to print some copies of the Patent and maybe even some other references, anyone got some good links regarding monopolies and IP).

Is that how it goes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phase 1: Collect underpants.
Phase 2-
Phase 3: Profit.

Re:DRM = Loss of Privacy

[bani]

Expect me to give bogus information to these DRM systems.
Expect me to create multiple bogus identities on these DRM systems.
Expect MS to get worthless profile data as a result.

Monopoly Allowed

[Lysander Luddite]

From: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46671,00 .html

An article on SSSCA:

"Unlike earlier drafts, this draft defers hugely to the private sector and the high-tech firms," Padden said. "In earlier drafts, the government just set a content protection standard. In this draft, the high-tech industry is given 18 months to negotiate with each other. It even provides the high-tech companies with antitrust exemptions."

Re:Monopoly Allowed

[statusbar]

_I_ wouldn't grant a monopoly to a company known to repeatedly abuse its monopoly positions.

But the government just might. As the previous poster stated, anti-trust is officialy not an issue! Problem solved! They don't care.

--jeff

Death of linux?

[GreenCrackBaby]

A fundamental building block for client-side content security is a secure operating system. If a computer can be booted only into an operating system that itself honors content rights, and allows only compliant applications to access rights-restricted data, then data integrity within the machine can be assured. This stepping-stone to a secure operating system is sometimes called "Secure Boot." If secure boot cannot be assured, then whatever rights management system the secure OS provides, the computer can always be booted into an insecure operating system as a step to compromise it.

Let me paraphrase: Microsoft has a patent on an OS that prevents a computer from booting anything but the "digital rights OS" Seems to me this would do away with dual boot PCs rather nicely.

Re:Death of linux?

[morgue-ann]

This stepping-stone to a secure operating system is sometimes called "Secure Boot."

It's also called the xbox.

That's why there are folks attacking the BIOS of the xbox (search your favorite p2p network for xbox.bin), trying to figure out how to boot unsigned software, over at xboxhacker

Re:Death of linux?

[Arandir]

That's not what Secure Boot is. You're scheme won't work if the BIOS won't let you. Take a BIOS with an integrated boot loader, the inability to boot anything but from the first partition of the first harddrive, and which contains a signature for that partition table. You're not even going to get to first base trying to install LILO.

But have no fear! Just because Microsoft and the RIAA love this DRMOS, doesn't mean that the consumer is going to rush to the store to buy one. They're next big sell is going to have to be to Dell, HP, IBM, every MOBO manufacturer, all the HD, CD, and DVD drive manufacturers, etc. The only way this scheme will work is if everyone in the build chain gets on board. And even if they do, there's always Apple, Inc. for your non Wintel needs.

Re:Can anyone say X-Box version 2

[EnderWiggnz]

no offense, but the X-Box IS the implementation of this.

MS first tried to push it as an "uber home box" a couple years ago, and they couldnt get anone to sign on.

So they repositioned it as a "game console" and people said - yeh, we'll do that.

wait - if the XBox takes off, they will move to monopolize the Home PC market.

Microsoft has some really major people on this...

[Hobart]

One of the named inventors on the patent, Butler Lampson, is a famed CS person who is noted in the Jargon File. Microsoft Research has all kinds of famous computer folk working there, including the inventor of Qsort, the author of VMS, the author of Turbo Pascal (now C#), and others.

Of course, this rights-management is all useless (as any informed antivirus software user can tell you) as long as users have the right to execute whatever code they want on their PCs. No software is safe from attack from an emulator. They'd have to make VMWare and Virtual PC illegal, and make flashing your computer's BIOS to a different BIOS illegal to actually have this work and stop any but the most casual practitioners.

Of course the way the legal system is acting as of late, that may not be too unrealistic a scenario :-(

resistance is futile...

[Anonymous Coward]

MS and A/V copyright owners have been working together for quite a while to get consumers under control and have now recruited hardware vendors. With the just announced inclusion of special chip-level circuitry in hardware (today DVD players; tomorrow processors, northbridge and southbridge chips, graphics controllers, IDE controllers, memory controllers, etc) that supports proprietary MS codecs, how long before we see systems that absolutely can't be tricked into letting us defeat increasingly restrictive copyrights?

Clever hacks and alternative operating systems may not be adequate to circumvent DMCA-protected hardware-implemented protection schemes when your DVD drive, your CPU, and your motherboard are all working against you.

Can this happen? Of course. All it takes is for a few companies like Intel, AMD, VIA, and others to quietly implement some security features that aren't visible.

In a few years, when all of the hardware we're using today is obsolete and in a landfill, your new system will have a new 200X speed DVD burner and a new 1.3THz Pentium VIII with 2Gb memory and a pair of 6.0Tbyte discs, all tied together with a new 4GHz 128-bit wide PCI-4 bus. You'll be able to get 75,000 frames per second on Quake14. Too bad that none of your old hardware will be compatible with your new system, but that's the price you pay for performance. You'll be happy.

Your new system will also have a bunch of security features built into the hardware that you're likely unaware of.

Shortly after most people have these new systems, some media company will begin producing products that utilize those security features you weren't aware of. Your old media will still play, but you'll want to see the new movies and hear the new music and they'll only play if all of the security features are in place and active. You won't be able to do anything that looks like capturing, recording, or reproducing content.

Will some consumers be unhappy? Sure. Will the media companies care about them? No. Will there be anything we can do about it then? Not likely.

Re:resistance is futile...

[Ogerman]

Your new system will also have a bunch of security features built into the hardware that you're likely unaware of. Will some consumers be unhappy? Sure. Will the media companies care about them? No. Will there be anything we can do about it then? Not likely.

Yes, it's called the boycott and the strike. Sure, it sounds really blue collar, doesn't it. But it could very well become necessary and happen. If all pissed off employees of various companies developing DRM crap got up and left, guess what? Bye bye DRM. The board members could talkselves blue in the face, but guess what? They have no power other than what their engineers give them. And no doubt those same employees would leave carrying crypto keys to be shared unto the world. The problem, is if too many of the engineers don't care. This is the very reason we need geek entrepreneurs to set things straight in the industry.

Re:resistance is futile...

[CtrlPhreak]

Yes, it's called the boycott and the strike.

See there's a major flaw to this idea. The people have to get up and do something about it instead of just sitting here on /. and bitching about what's wrong.

People are too lazy these days and don't want to get involved. Not to mention that the average joe has no clue what his real rights are, all he knows is that Mp3s are illegal and the rest of us just want to have everything for nothing while the poor artists are starving in the streets because they got 150million instead of 152 million. They know whay is given to them by the same media who wants to protect it's own monetary interests. Not to mention, that there are actually people out there who believe in this technology because of the american dream. It's the same proncipal about everyone wanting to protect the rich now because someday that could be them. i'm not saying the dream is bad, but you get the point. (I'm stil hoping that I'll be rich someday too.)

This brings me back to the point that the computer geek niche is a small piece of the overall pie. I'm a computer geek god damnit and I don't want my rights taken away because we represent a small part of the market share. We need to get the average joe interested in this, more than that we need to get him angry about it, enough to do something about it. we need to swell the ranks of our niche market until we are the majority and a force to be rekoned with. Until then, we are doomed.

What is this in preparation for?

[3Suns]

I'm not sure what MS will do with a rights-management OS. If it goes mainstream, will most web content/music/video become rights-managed, rendering everything obsolete except Windows?

1. MS creates the first complete rights-managed OS.
   
2. media creators (record companies, web publishers, movie industry) release everything as rights-managed media.
   
3. MS holds the patent on rights magement, so other operating systems are legally unable to do basic things like browse the web and listen to CD's (CSS anyone?)
   
4. Since windows only runs on X86 hardware, all other architectures become either curiosities or research tools
   
5. New media also can't be played on old cd/dvd players, making forcing customers to either buy expensive (MS-liscensed??) new rights-managed players or stop buying media.
   

Is this what anyone besides MS wants???

Re:What is this in preparation for?

[Znork]

The RIAA/MPAA believe they want it because they havent been in bed with MS for a long time yet. They will have a rude awakening when MS starts charging them $20M for the rights to encode in DRM media formats (which at that time will be the only legal media to encode in, and the only playable format). At that point they'll start getting bought up or run out of buisness by MS.

Some hardware companies believe they want it because it lets them offer another feature. They're a bit more sceptical tho since they know the pitfalls of cooperating with MS.

The public doesnt understand what is slowly happening and they wont object until they notice they're paying 30-50 percent of their paycheck to MS.

Arrgh! No one's read the claims yet!

[Azog]

So far, none of the posters here have actually read the details of the patent. So everyone chill out for a second and read this critical little quote from the patent text:

The CPU manufacturer equips the CPU 140 with a pair of public and private keys 164 that is unique to the CPU [...] Other physical implementations may include storing the key on an external device to which the main CPU has privileged access (where the stored secrets are inaccessible to arbitrary application or operating systems code). The private key is never revealed and is used only for the specific purpose of signing stylized statements, such as when responding to challenges from a content provider, as is discussed below.

And, if you take the trouble to read the description of how the whole thing works, it comes down to the fact that the CPU can authenticate itself over the network at runtime by using this private key that ONLY the CPU can access.

Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't heard anything about Intel or AMD building public key / private key pairs into their CPUs. In fact, the whole Intel processor ID fiasco has probably scared them away from this area. Don't forget that this patent was filed in 1998, and was probably designed long before the PIII was released.

I think the most interesting thing about this is that it shows where Microsoft wanted to go in 1998 - they probably were working with Intel on the processor ID thing, and the next step would have been public / private keys to enable the design shown in this patent.

But it won't be happening anytime real soon. Unless maybe all those Pentium 4's out there actually have this as an unannounced feature. Unlikely, but possible - the P4 hyperthreading stuff was like that...

yep...DRM

[unformed]

Dirty Rotten Microsoft (kinda like DRI, get it?)

Saving Software Now

[TACD]

Every time I hear some news like this, my resolve to archive up all of the software I have now is renewed. I plan to upgrade as little as possible; at the moment, I can believe that my computer is more mine than Microsoft's (or anyone else's). It seems like it won't be like that for very long, and I can only wonder how many years it will be before my PC which I have control over is illiegal because of that fact.

Re:If Microsoft is going to be the Watchman...

[Moonshadow]

Who will watch the watchman?

Then, who watches the watchman's watchman? And who watches the watchman's watchman's watchman? So on and so forth.

Until the people are the watchman, you're going to have corruption on all levels. That was the initial idea behind the American Government. Look where we are now. "Screw the people, what can it do for me?" Wonder why we have such a screwed up government?

The problem is, if the people are the watchmen, things like this don't come to be, you retain your freedoms, and Microsoft doesn't get paid. Therefore, we can be sure that that'll never happen. Microsoft can buy any legislation they want, these days...

Linux: The next OS of choice for IP pirates?

[nysus]

If you stretched all this out to its natural conclusion, one day Linux will become the only OS that still makes it possible to easily circumvent encryption and other methods of gaining free access to intellectual property.

Conceivably, the courts could then rule that Linux, desipite other useful utilities it might have (like some file swapping systems we know), is nothing but a tool for pirates and therefore needs to be stopped. Judges will start outlawing Linux kernels until they begin incorporating their own digitial rights management system. But I then wonder how Linux could get around this patent issue?

Re:Linux: The next OS of choice for IP pirates?

[Dr. Awktagon]

In a future version of Linux, you'll probably see something like:

/* Note, changing the one to a zero will result in your getting
arrested and labeled a "data terrorist" */

#define DRM 1
#if DRM
ptr *datafrob(ptr *data) {
if(drm_access_allowed)
return decode("/etc/.secret_drm_key_shh_dont_tell", data);
return NULL;
}
#else
ptr *datafrob(ptr *data) {
return decode(data);
}
#endif

I wonder if that would good enough to let Linux off the hook in the future Copyright Wars?

Re:Linux: The next OS of choice for IP pirates?

[Billly Gates]

Linux kernels until they begin incorporating their own digitial rights management system"

linux 3.0 kernel:

// Don't remove the next line. That would be very bad
#include <drm_rights_HW.h>

Re:Linux: The next OS of choice for IP pirates?

[StrawberryFrog]

one day Linux will become the only OS that still makes it possible to ... gain free access to intellectual property.

You mean apart from *BSD, GNU/HURD, Atheos, and all other present and potential free open OSs. Which is everyone except for Microsoft and some niche players (Apple, Sun).

So what if Atheos is not even a niche player? It's GPL'd and therefor not going to vanish like BeOS did if some random company folds.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

They can't make it impossible...

[cduffy]

...but they can make it highly impractical -- and that's close enough.

Anyone else reminded of the 1950's?

[Mikiso]

For some reason I'm reminded of Cold War Russia. I'm seeing our corporate run government employing many of the practices we once label "EVIL". I suppose that now we have the "Digital Curtain" and the "Redmond Wall". First we get a crippled OS that either lets us listen to RIAA approved WMA files *OR* we can debug our latest project, but never both. All because of some "protected" data. Its not a far cry to think that the next step will be information restriction. Imagine an OS that won't let you use non-approved data at all. Now we all know M$ won't give /. a digital signature so I guess we won't have anyplace left to complain. Funny that they will take away our first Amendment rights at the kernel level...

Not Technology/MS==Monopoly, Its Patent==Monopoly

[idonotexist]

I think a couple of messages are missing the point and are asking, does this technology or the fact that 'Microsoft [bad]' would have this technology == an allowed monopoly? I don't think that is the question to ask. I think the question to ask is whether this patent would allow for a monopoly.

Without getting out my Barrett on Intellectual Property hornbook, generally: yes. It is well founded that a patent, with rights constitutionally provided, is essentially a de facto monopoly; there are no exceptions (unless the patent holder licenses the patent to another party, but still such a license is a demonstration of the monopolistic nature of patent law).

The US government is not Royalty, and thus. . .

[kfg]

Must pay royalties.

You are incorrect in your allegation that the government could not be sued for patent infringment. It actually happens now and then. Not often though, because the government purchases ip rights just like anyone else when they need to. What do you think provides the financial fuel to the military industrial complex?

Why do you think they have to purchase seat licences for Windows?

The answer is simple, because they are legally obligated to do so. If they do not the constitution itself provides for redress of grievences against the government. Trust me, MS would profer such griviences in the most strident terms. And have.

The government also collects its own patents, because if it did not it would be obligated to pay royalties to those that eventually patented the technology.

During the Manhatten project civilian workers were deemed to legally own all of their own ideas. The government thus issued a directive that all ideas, no matter how apparently trivial, were to be brought to the attention of the military command, and the federal government would pay them a dollar for each, so that IT held the ip rights.

You can find an amusing relating of how this worked in Feyman's autobiographical ramblings in " What do you Care what People Think?"

The book itself is a good read, and highly recommended even to a general audience, but the story in questiion is still highly relevant, as it relates to the ideas of obviousness of certain technological ideas. Feynman took the side that these ideas were so obvious they weren't patentable. Nonetheless, he ended up as the inventor of record of the nuclear power plant and the nuclear powered airplane. ( He also suggested the nuclear powered submarine as 'patently' obvious, but he dosn't get credit as inventor because someone else had already suggested it).

His relatings of his attempt to actually collect his dollar is extremely amusing as well. It seems the government didn't make any provision for, or believe it actually had to PAY the promised recompense. On principle Feynman wouldn't let them off the hook.

For that matter, any person who did not recieve their dollar would be fully within their rights to claim the patent as their own, as proper consideration was NOT in fact given, as required by the contract.

They could, in fact, have sued the government for patent infringment and insisted on royalties.

KFG

Re:The US government is not Royalty, and thus. . .

[TwP]

Thanks for the clarification :)

I don't remember which Feynman book this is from, but the story goes that Feynman was approached by some government patent person and offered one dollar for a few of his ideas. As the gentleman was leaving, Feynman naturally asked for his one dollar. "That is just a formality," the government type replied. Feynman persisted and eventually got his one dollar which was then used to purchase some candy for everyone else in the lab.

"Where did you get the candy," was the next question asked of Feynman by his associates. "Oh, I used my one dollar from the government patent gentlemen." Soon enough all the lab workers were asking for their dollar as well for previous inventions.

My memory is rusty, and so the story might have a few errors or omissions. Feel free to correct.

But, concerning the NSA's secure Linux, does that qualify as prior art in this case? Someone should do a comparison of what the NSA has implemented with the MS patent claims and see if it holds water.

Re:The US government is not Royalty, and thus. . .

[Detritus]

The government has sovereign immunity, which means that the government cannot be sued without its consent. The consent may be in the form of legislation that allows certain types of lawsuits.

Dear Mr. Bin Laden

[t_allardyce]

Dear Mr. Bin Laden,

Sometime ago, I wrote to you asking if you could please take care of Microsoft. Unfortunately you 'cared' for the wrong target _COUGH_ place. (I think New York is quite a long way away from Microsoft HQ). Please, please, please, could you consider taking care of Microsoft and Bill Gates? He is responsible for America's crimes against humanity and must be stopped at all costs. For example, his use of bribery and monopolising has forced his evil product to be installed on sacred religious computer systems in your land. He is also responsible for attempting to destroy the Internet by brainwashing his minions into using Microsoft protocols. Soon, as the American government plans to deploy the SSSCA (backed by the RIAA (Recording Industry Ass-holes of America) and backed secretly by Bill Gates himself) Microsoft will release its operating system to be compliant with this. Suddenly, almost overnight, the last little bits of freedom that America enjoys today will vanish. Speech will be un free and alternative operating systems (that do not comply with the closed specifications of the SSSCA that will only be disclosed to Microsoft) will be outlawed. Lucky for me, I don't live in America so I will wake up laughing with the rest of the world. However, seeing as they helped us out in WW2, I think we owe it to them to help them out with this.

PS. I have been practicing on (ironically) MS Flight Sim. and have learnt how to use most of the systems on the B767. If you are short of pilots to bomb Microsoft, I would be more than happy to help.

Re:Dear Mr. Bin Laden

[Znork]

Ironic, wouldnt it be, since out of the corporate websites of computer companies that I visited after the 9/11 attack, MS was the only one who didnt mention their sympathies for the victims.

The were pushing XP tho.

I do extend my sympathy for their victims.

Eerie use of word TRUST in the claims

[gosand]

As I read through the claims section, one word kept getting repeated a LOT, in some form or another - TRUST.

Oh, the tragic irony.

Microsoft merged with the Monopoly logo

Paranoid

[LS]

Why is everyone being so apologetic about being "paranoid"? You've heard the saying: "Just because your paranoid, don't mean they're not after you." Well, they are after you. Do you think that those in power have a final point at which they will be satiated, then decide to start doing good for humanity? NO. Those in power build more power to protect their power.

I don't think that those in power want to control your lives for the sake of it. You are all just chess pieces in a world-wide game of power. You are the grunts in Warcraft, the peons of THE biggest real-time strategy game. And to forget about the fact that you are slaves, you play real-time strategy games. The irony...

LS

Trusted client?

[Chris Johnson]

OK, so I went straight to the claims (never pay attention to the abstract) and tried to work out exactly what Microsoft has patented and will be enforcing.

Trouble is, the claims are tangled with each other and amazingly general, it seems- but the gist of it seems fairly clear. It's just a little hard to believe.

Has Microsoft successfully patented the _concept_ of 'trusted client', daft though that concept is?

I couldn't even begin to tell you whether that is good or bad (I mean, apart from the 'being able to not let any non-MS programs run on Windows' part). Any lawyers in the house care to give their interpretation on what MS actually got for themselves here?

Re:Arrgh! No one's read the claims yet!

[Sand_Man]

Again, yes some of us DID read it. CPU ID's are not the only way this could work.

"Other physical implementations may include storing the key on an external device to which the main CPU has privileged access (where the stored secrets are inaccessible to arbitrary application or operating systems code)."

I believe a PCI card could be such an "external device". I also think one of those USB memory sticks could be made to meet that description, and would have the advantage of being portable. The concern is what constitutes "arbitrary application or operating systems code". M$ has already described Linux as a virus, not to big a leap from there.........

There's a way we can fight this

[heretic108]

What we need is some devs to write some killer apps that refuse to run alongside any software lacking an 'open source' certificate.

Create a database of open source apps, with each OSS app 'trusting' all others, and mistrusting all proprietary apps.

If someone tries to run an open source app while a proprietary app is running, then pop up a window with propaganda like "Security Warning: You are running a proprietary application, which fails to comply with open software security standards. Click OK to close proprietary applications, or Cancel to quit this program."

Peculiar institution

[David Gould]

You know, that's starting to sound like a really good analogy, even if it runs the risk of invoking a modified Godwin's Law (i.e., by making such an outrageous accusation, you officially lower the discussion to the level of flaming, so you lose).

I think it was here on slashdot that someone posted what I believe is a quote from "Alpha Centauri" (I never played the game, so I only know what I saw here). Ahem:

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free access to information is the only safeguard against tyranny.

The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information will soon burst with freedom and vitality, while the free nation gradually constricting its grip on free discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.

Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Easy way to circumvent a M$ DRM operating system..

[DocSnyder]

Wrap the file into a VBS script, a Word macro or a screensaver. Feed it into Outlook and click...

Re:Going against the grain

[Tackhead]

> If people do buy it then MS is a monopoly, or people are real stupid. If people don't buy it then they will buy something else, which will kill the monopoly that they are protecting.

Observation: MS is a monopoly. The court agrees.

Observation: People are stupid. Proof by example - 90% of TV.

> Conclusion: Informed consumers kill monopolies.

Not a conclusion, merely a statement of fact. A fact that is of little relevance, however, given the depth of entrenchment of said monopoly and the depth of stupidity among the consuming population.

Death of hard drives??

[SeanAhern]

Microsoft has a patent on an OS that prevents a computer from booting anything but the "digital rights OS" Seems to me this would do away with dual boot PCs rather nicely.

Taking this even further -- to completely guarantee the integrity of the data, don't you have to also prevent the user from removing the hard drive? I mean, the user could conceivably open up the box, pull the drive out, and put it in a machine with an insecure operating system. Bingo - compromised data.

There are just so many things wrong with this concept that it's difficult to know where to begin...

Re:Death of hard drives??

[Wesley Felter]

The data would be encrypted on the drive.

Great News!

[kindbud]

Now there's no chance in hell that any such thing as a DRM OS will ever make it to the marketplace.

Bush II is gonna be out of office come next election, I guarantee it. His father's fate will also his own.

Once this pro-trust administration has been unseated, the next one will not fail to prohibit Microsoft from extending its monopoly this way.

The DRM OS will then die a deserved death, rotting in Microsoft's patent portfolio.

Wow

[Tachys]

This gives a whole new meaning to the error message:

"Program shut down because it perform an illegal operation"

MS of B now owns CS of A

[redhog]

a) A new act is on its way that requires any digital device to have Digital Rights Management.

b) MicroSoft is granted a patent on Digital Rights Management in Operating Systems, and thus for any programmable digital device.

Does this sound just a bit like MS just bought themeselves totalitarian authority over Corporate States of America?

Doesn't matter...

[Pollux]

The SSSCA itself is unconstitutional. The argument is plain and simple.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

So, the government has the exclusive right to secure copyright. Enforcing copyright? Nope. If you look at Paragraph 401 of US Copyright Law, 1978, the owner of the copyright is required to initiate enforcement of the copyright by issuing some kind of declaration of infraction.

Plain and simple...the government cannot aid in the enforcement of a copyright UNTIL the enforcement has been begun by the copyright owner.

Now, relating this to Microsoft and their "DRM OS," there's nothing that says that some 3rd party can't aid in enforcing the copyright. HOWEVER, depending on how you interpret the law, the forced limitation on copyrighted material DOES infringe on the definition of "ownership."

As it's been said by now, according to Copyright Law, the ownership of a copyright and the ownership of the copyrighted material are mutually exclusive. Anotherwords, the ownership of a copyright DOES NOT INCLUDE ownership of the copyrighted material IN ANY WAY (Para. 202). Microsoft's limitation through digital encryption of the material when the material is owned by someone other than Microsoft directly conflicts with Para. 202.

A good example: say I purchase a book to read from a bookstore, but the book print is too small. I then go to Target to purchase a magnifying lamp so I can read the book. Microsoft is basically trying to say that it would be illegial for me to use the reading lamp to read the book unless the reading lamp was purchased from Microsoft itself.

Sorry, Microsoft, but if I own the music, I OWN the music. Your limitation of my EXCLUSIVE OWNERSHIP of the music is illegal.

Re:Doesn't matter...

[mpe]

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective
writings and discoveries.

Interestingly whilst this would allow copyright and patents to exist. It does not allow them to be transfered to another party.
Yet we have patents and copyrights outliving the inventor or author...

Re:Doesn't matter...

[cduffy]

You're believing the pernicious nonsense promulgated by much of the content-creation industry.

If I go to a music store and say I want to buy a copy of [name piece of music] and they sell me a CD, they sold me a CD containing the music -- no license involved. They did not sell me the rights to the music, of course, but I only need those rights to redistribute copies (which I'm not doing, right?). If they want to place limitations on their sale, those need to be specified up front; otherwise, it is what it looks like -- a sale.

Thus, I have every right to make extra copies for my Walkman or my car -- I just can't give them to anyone else.

Similarly, the license from MS is only needed if I take advantage of technologies I don't already have a license to use. Any purchase from a reseller includes an implied warantee that the item is free from infringements [UCC 2-312(3), 2A-211(2)]. Hence, if I buy a copy of Windows and later find out that I can't use any technology included in it without a separate license, I have cause to sue the reseller from whom I purchased that copy. But anyhow... why would I be forced to use Microsoft's DRM technology, even if a license is needed?

(IANAL, but I read the UCC for fun)

Re:Arrgh! No one's read the claims yet!

[ImaLamer]

I've supported hardware generated 'keys' for a long time now.

I think that taking things such as CPU temp, firmware numbers, bios version number, RAM size [free or total] to create a 'key' would be nice. Other dynamic numbers such as cpu usage, disk throughput, computer uptime, etc would be great to create a secret key. [and even help create a public key]

But! They must be removable, via disk or a card [credit card or memory stick]. And it can't be authored by someone who would possible 'phone home' with the key. M$ is known for phoning home with some of it's apps and controlling things in your PC that you don't want them to control.

Ever installed IE? It goes to MSN right away. We have no idea what type of information they are sending because no one can see the code. There isn't an option of turning this off. You get your home page back next time - but it is too late. Ever went to hotmail.com on a pc that has MSN Mes.? Why is it that the program shows up in your system tray only seconds later? I never started it!

My point is, this is a great idea in theory. I would like a system that lets people buy software or media online. This is something that we all want. It is possible to stream full length movies to broadband users. Netbroadcaster.com [pop up city] has movies such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Refeer Maddness", classics that someone would be willing to pay a few bucks to watch [you work out the business model]. It's possible.

The problem is, no one is moving towards formats that work [divx;-)] because they aren't going to cash in. No effort is being made towards being open.

But in practice we all know that this system will keep you from backing up any type of media or software that you like - keep down artists that don't sign with ??AA companies and so on.

It's not about DRM, it's about control. If this system is implemented I hope we don't ever pay for computers again. Why should we, we will pay through the nose just to use it - even though we won't be able to control a thing.

So when this whole thing comes out beware of this simple saying:
"All your OS are belong to us"

A neccesary evil.

[debolaz]

Its sort of sad to say that piracy is a neccesary evil to be able to use software / media in a somewhat humane way nowadays.

Take games for instance. They install the entire content of a CD onto the machine, with no option to minimize installed files, yet, requires the CD to be in for playing.

Or lets look at movies. Isnt it annoying when the rest of the world gets to watch a movie when you have to wait an additional 6 months, simply because you dont live in the popular zone? Or perhaps it didnt sell to well in the other zones and they (big bad sony?) decides its not worth selling in your zone.

Or how about the case of ebooks? The legal way provides no ways for blind to read them. Or for that matter, perhaps it restricts you from printing it out to take to the mens/ladies room.

Now, it used to be illegal for companies to put this type of restrictions on intellectual property. Thank god it isnt like that anymore huh? Now, companies can buy a law if the current ones doesnt suit them. I mean, its not like the government has to care about the little guys. The silent majority that will never complain.. or at least, not many enough. Wee....

I support piracy 100%. I support it because I know that companies will not give me, a user, any good alternaltive, whileas a pirated copy most likely will be possible to use in all the ways I want to use it. Why cant I pay for it at the same time? Well, look at my problem...

I have a big mp3 collection. Now, I do believe artists are entitled to profit from their work. However, to be able to do this legally, I have to get out (eeek), stand in the rain for 40 minutes waiting for the never coming public transit, walk 20 minutes to the record shop that might have the song I want, then buy it together with tons of other songs, pluss I have to pay for the price of the CD. Then I have to get home before the last bus leaves.

Now, instead of doing it the legal way.. i can simply download it in 1 minute, while being all dry, and being able to use it anywhere, on my computer, on CD, anywhere. And it only took me a minute. Now, which method is the best?

Ok? But why not support the initiatives from RIAA to do legal online services? Well, there's a number of reasons here.

• They want to charge the exact same thing as you would pay for CD's, ie, you would pay a nonexisting expense.
• I dont recall the link but I heard they said the p2p technology was very important for this. Does this imply they taking adventage of regular peoples bandwidth for their services? I think that's a fucking ripoff, pardon my spanish.
• All initiatives at this suggests a restricted format, which is severely limited in what you can do with. This is the main reason I do not like CD's, I think this is simply reinventing the whe^H^H^Hmistake.

Obviously, I dont like any of this. And untill they change their stand on all those 3 points above (And yes, I do realize this would more easily allow piracy, but its the only way I will accept it), I will continue my public support for piracy and help those who needs help with it.

The same arguments pretty much goes for movies as well. Apart that I do not mind the DVD disc, I think it provides something in decent quality compared to what it costs. The main problems here are restrictions (now useless restrictions, but they still seem to stick with them) on the format, and in that, zone restrictions. People should be able to view DVDs from all zones. Waiting 6 months for a movie to be released in another zone if the company decides to release the movie at all is just bullshit. That's not how it should work.

For games, Im more positive to restrictions. But just find a better way than by requring an otherwise useless CD to be in the drive. That has been cracked in every single game ever released, I dont know why they keep doing it. I mean, its just an annoying thing, nothing that prevents piracy at all. Do you hear me game developers? Find a better way!! :)

But seriously, do we want to live in a world heading more and more towards this. Where media and software corporations buys all the laws they want, where the little man has nothing he should have said? Where the little girl is taught at school that this is a good thing (Yes, this is already happening)?

So, anyone agree with the way it's going? Ok, everyone agreeing stay silent? Wow.. seems like we've got a majority here. Now you're mad at me, and will reply that you use Linux (or FreeBSD or another free os). But this isnt enough. This is passive support. Only active support, and a lot of it, will make this problem go away. And as we can see, trying to battle such insanities in the courtroom (refering to the case of eff vs dmca), will just end with judges laughing in our faces. We need to find a better way of getting the point through.

...any suggestions?

I'd be interested in industry opinion

[Phil Wherry]

I've noticed one thing curiously missing from the discussion surrounding digital rights management. What are, in the industry's eyes, the rights of the consumer? Everything I've seen about digital rights management suggests that the only rights being protected are those of the content owners. I think it would be fascinating to see a direct answer from the industry in response to this question.

One would expect, that DRM would bring significant new opportunities for the consumer; lower prices, perhaps, or the ability to share content with friends in a limited and fair way.

The DRM proposals I've seen thus far don't provide any new abilities for the consumer, though, and are therefore destined for failure since they represent a downgrade from current abilities at the same (or higher) prices. As the market continues to vote with its money for non-restricted media, I'd expect that the attempts to distort the actions of the market through legislation will become ever-increasingly shrill.

Re:I'd be interested in industry opinion

[bfree]

What industry? Recording, Motion Picture, Retail, Hardware or Software? And what about the artists, what industry are they part of?
You say "One would expect, that DRM .... the ability to share content with friends in a limited and fair way" in the context of improvements which DRM can offer. Well not only is the idea you propose (legal sharing) the opposite of DRM, but I cannot see how you could ever forsee DRM being able to bring an improvement to consumers as they presently have no content management which could conflict with their fair use of copyrighted material.
Is DVD a downgrade or upgrade for consumers? They get digital reproducability (i.e a DVD doesn't wear out like a VHS) but they also get to watch compression artifacts (i'd personally prefer a fuzzy picture to jagged blocks of crap). They get the option of multiple soundtracks but they lose the right to fast-forward through the trailers. Just because something is a downgrade in some ways does not mean that it will fail, if the only way to get a hard disk greater than 100Gb is to accept DRM (whereupon you can have a Tb HDD) then consumers will weigh up the pros and cons and make their choice.

Re:I'd be interested in industry opinion

[mpe]

I've noticed one thing curiously missing from the discussion surrounding digital rights management. What are, in the industry's eyes, the rights of
the consumer?

That's a simple one, the industry dosn't think they should have any rights :)

Everything I've seen about digital rights management suggests that the only rights being protected are those of the content
owners.

Where the content "owners" appear far more often to be publishers rather than the people who actually produce the content in the first place. (Whilst the laws involved and especially the US constitution supposedly give the rights to creators they don't appear to benefit that much.)

One would expect, that DRM would bring significant new opportunities for the consumer; lower prices, perhaps, or the ability to share content
with friends in a limited and fair way.

It could also spell the demise of third party publishing. Since an author could control the distribution of his or her work on their own. This is something that the large corporations involved in publishing and distribution do not want to happen.

As the market continues to vote with its money for
non-restricted media, I'd expect that the attempts to distort the actions of the market through legislation will become ever-increasingly shrill.

You might also expect that there will be attempts to "obsolete" non-restricted media and make the restricted the only version available....

Re:I'd be interested in industry opinion

[mttlg]

What are, in the industry's eyes, the rights of the consumer?

A "consumer" really only has one right - the right to buy more stuff. Anything that interferes with this "right" must therefore be made illegal. At least, that's what Congress seems to think. Personally, I'm not a consumer; I'm a citizen who occasionally buys things when necessary. The only thing that would cause me to buy more stuff would be better value. Unfortunately, there are enough mindless "consumers" out there who will buy any piece of crap they see on TV that value isn't necessary to sell a product, and as a result I buy less and have no influence over the quality of products produced. After the failures of DIVX and eBooks, I'm sure companies will spend more time figuring out how to get people to buy their useless digital crap than they will working on making it worth buying. A law here, a monopoly there, some prime time ad campaigns... Wake me up when the world descends into chaos, entertainment will probably be rather dull until then.

Microsoft Gets Patent on Evil Operating Systems

[jorbettis]

Microsoft, in a bid today to control the Evil market into the future, has filed for a patent on so called EvilOS technology.

Industry leaders and Open Source activists alike have decried the patent as unfairly perpetuating Microsoft's illegal monopoly in the Operating Systems market. "Evil is set become a very important feature in operating systems of the Twenty First Century, and by getting this patent, Microsoft has effectivly locked competitors, such as the free Linux Operating System, out of the market", said Eric S Raymond, leader of the Open Source Initiative.

The Electronic Founteers Foundation has called for technologists to search "prior art," or implementations of Evil in operating system design prior to Microsoft's, in an attempt to challenge this patent in court.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer countered critics by saying: "Microsoft has always been a leader in Evil and Operating Systems, we were the first to innovate Operating Systems to have Evil built in, and so it is only fair that we should be granted this patent. That's the American Way."

What's the alternative?

[SIGFPE]

If we have digital intellectual property rights it seems entirely reasonable that companies go out of their way to protect theirs and that other companies provide what is needed to enable them to do that (and protect their own ability to do that as well - hence the patent). I don't see any alternative besides (1) abolishing digital IP or (2) having the government manage digital property rights. Both seem scary to me.

Isn't that naive?

[roystgnr]

Even what the DMCA says isn't as bad as how the DMCA is applied. I can name you half a dozen Linux DVD players that rely on DeCSS code; did that make any difference in the courts?

Re:Isn't that naive?

[roystgnr]

Who didn't notice that? DeCSS was originally Windows software, since it came out shortly before Linux had support for even unencrypted DVDs. Of course Windows software utilizing it would come out before Linux software would.

there was not one full-fledged Linux DVD player on the market (just some shellscripts)

Oh, so if it's put together with bash instead of C, that somehow strips it of any legal consideration? Software developers are supposed to jump from a few kilobytes of decryption code to a few hundred kilobytes of GUI movie player instantaneously? I'm surprised any player software got put together as fast as it did.

The argument was about "substantial non-infringing uses", remember? Playing DVDs without Windows is a substantial non-infringing use, both when it was hard during the trial, and when it's easy now.

Prior Art

[lordbyron]

I am sure that we can find some prior art that would invalidate the patent...

I for one have DRM on a chip tied to hardware in 1998

As well as a lot of work on DRM at the per play level of file access that communicates on a per play fee.

Just a thought

Now illegal to enforce DRM!

[karlm]

Hmm... if they've patented certain methods for DRM, so if the OS is reverse-engineered in order to maintain compatability, then it would be illegal to actually implement the patented DRM enforcement features in the compatability code, right?

This seems like Ford patenting cars that won't speed and then proceding to manufacture them. Granted, M$ is trying to attract content providers and thereby attract consumers. However, they're making it illegal for WINE et al. to implement their protections, so WINE will be legally forced to implement fake DRM library/system calls. I assume the DMCA still allows reverse-engineering for compatability purposes.

Re:Arrgh! No one's read the claims yet!

[Azog]

Oh, I totally agree that Microsoft would love to do that be the only "legal" OS. And it may happen, but it won't have anything to do with this patent.

You see, now that the DMCA is law, they don't have to bother with this anymore. They don't have to have real secure hardware, or secure software. They just have to implement some half-assed, weak, pathetic attempt at security, and then sue the hell out of anyone who points out how pathetic and weak it is... Much more convenient then doing real security!

Here's my prediction of what will really happen with all this crap.

The government will extend the DMCA in a direction similar to that proposed by the SSSCA, but since that was clearly insane and would have made Linux and BSD illegal, they will "compromise".

The "compromise" will be that people can either (a) run "Digital Rights Management Compliant" operating systems from Microsoft, Apple, and maybe a few others, or (b) Get a license to run a "non-Certified" operating system. Getting the license will put you in a big database. Your IP address will be tracked. The government will get away with this because they will point out that only a small percentage of computer users will need to get licensed, and most of those will actually be ISP's running Linux servers.

Besides the ISP's and other companies, the only individuals needing licenses will be a few thousand software developers, and a small number of computer "hobbyists".

Microsoft will love this because it will be a huge obstacle to Linux on the desktop, counterbalancing the cost of Microsoft. People will think:

Well, I can pay $200 for Windows and be up and running tonight, or I can fill out a big, scary form, send it in to the government with a $50 dollar fee, and be licensed to run Linux in two weeks..."

So what would happen?

A bunch of Linux users would leave the US. A lot of them would get licensed. A lot of them would give up Linux and go back to MS or Apple. And Microsoft would win.

That's my nightmare scenario, anyway.
.

eh?

[Danse]

What does a secure version of Linux have to do with DRM? Totally different things as far as I can tell.

Designed to get rid of MS's competition

[spitzak]

The entire purpose of this is to make competitors to Windows illegal or impossible to use.

You can do DRM in an Open Source way, such that OSS software could be allowed to copy a data stream from the network and put it on a device, and despite the full access to the source code it is impossible to use that data stream for any other purpose. This will be *WAY* harder to crack than what MSoft is proposing, the people who want DRM should realize that MSoft will sell "source code" as well, harder to read, but somebody with the right resources can still decode the instructions and chips. It is a lot safer to make a design that assummes the user can read the source.

What is done is you use public/private key encryption. A new DRM display or speaker has this device embedded in epoxy at a very late point. The device has a *fully documented* interface and takes a digital stream input and processes it and puts it on the display, it also has an interface that outputs the public key. Getting the private key would require smashing the device to the point that it is inoperable, so would any attempts to remove this device and insert a home- built one. The device could also have a settable clock imbedded and a random number generator that cannot be set.

A company that wants to send you content that you can only display on your device would request the key. Open source software can read the key and send it. It can also lie and send any key it wants to, but that is pretty useless because you will just get data you cannot use. The provider then checks the key against a trusted central manufacturer database to make sure it is not a fake key by somebody who built their home-brew device. The provider would then send the encrypted data. Open-source software can store the data or send it to the device.

If they want to limit the time they can look at it, the encoded data includes a clock range and the random key. It must match. If you try to reset the clock (this must be allowed because the power might fail, and the provider wants the clock to be at a time in the future) the random number will change. You will have to request the data again, sending the old one (the provider also cannot decode it, but may have a header encoded with their own keys containing the data checksum and the clock you asked for before).

Obviously this system has lots of "fair use" infringements, but it would work, and in fact is probably much more in the interests of the digital content providers. MicroSoft's "solution" is 100% designed to further their own interests. They are as willing to screw the RIAA as to screw the users, you know.

Re:If you don't like it, then don't buy it.

[borzwazie]

And here's our greatest weakness:

You're right of course, we need to publish. But for how long will we be able to publish? Microsoft has already tried to enforce not being able to critisize Microsoft using Microsoft products...

To totally control access to a system, you have to control the whole damn thing, input to output. That means that you will need a license just to input. Since Linux won't be able to support DRM totally, or will be able to go around it, you won't be allowed to use it. If you use THEIR tools, you'll be denied a license to rant!

If you don't have a license, and it's illegal to go around the system, YOU HAVE NO VOICE.

Re:Who cares?

[Jason Earl]

That's the point. Most of the 98% of the general computing public either downloads MP3s or has a "borrowed" copy of MS Office (or some other piece of software).

Heck, Apple has launched an entire ad campaign that basically shows you how easy it is to make your own CDs using their software. They realize that most people, including Microsoft's core clientelle, like the idea of being able to do these types of things. If Microsoft pushes too hard on DRM all they will be doing is making their competitors offerings more palatable.

I guess we know what the BSOD will say...

[mttlg]

Microsoft Windows DRM has detected an error. In order to facilitate the management of digital rights, Microsoft would like to remind you of your rights.

You have the right to remain silent...

Re:RIAA virgin sacrifices

[No Such Agency]

I don't think it's possible for anybody to "sacrifice" _fewer_ virgins than I have this year... :-/

Prior art doesn't always mean "already patented"

[yerricde]

I was under the impression that government work could never be patented at all since it is funded by tax payers.

Prior art does not have to refer to a prior patent. It can refer to any prior application of a process. Application of a new and useful process by the government before anybody applies for a patent on the process places the process in the public domain.

Government-funded research often produces patents that are auctioned off to the highest bidder. Sad but true.

Legislation vs. "the Market"

[No Such Agency]

As the market continues to vote with its money for non-restricted media, I'd expect that the attempts to distort the actions of the market through legislation will become ever-increasingly shrill.

Wow. I didn't think I'd ever consider the use of legislation to regulate "the market" to be a BAD thing. Even Adam Smith noted (quite vigorously) that government would have to use laws to restrict market forces (eg. disallowing monopolies) and thus prevent exploitation of both the workers and customers.

Famously rich?

[rho]

Here we have something as fundamental as a computer operating system designed around an idea that destroys rights we've otherwise enjoyed for literally hundreds of years - for nothing more than to line the pockets of people who are already famously rich.

I dislike this attitude, for many reasons.

1) Perhaps they are famously rich. So? Are they suddenly less-worthy as citizens, or as humans, if they are?

2) In the past, it was more difficult to distribute copies of a work. Some that weren't difficult (like audio tapes) had a built-in failsafe: after enough copies, the media wore out, or the quality degenerated after so many generations. Thus, the originators of the work sold more "genuine" copies, and became famously rich. If you take away the ability of the originators to become "famously rich"--or at least generate some money--they have no incentive to produce work outside of the goodness of their hearts.

3) Human goodness is remarkably scarce and short-lived when found. I don't care to depend on it too much.

Don't misunderstand, this is not to say that DRM isn't onerous: I only want to point out that the relative wealth of one of the parties is *NOT* a factor in the decision-making.

Or, at least, it *shouldn't* be.

Re:Famously rich?

[Rogerborg]

• If you take away the ability of the originators to [...] generate some money--they have no incentive to produce work outside of the goodness of their hearts.

So the incentive to produce original works primarily for profit disappears. I wonder how that would effect the quality of the original works that would still be produced?

How dreadful to live in a world where content is produced by people who actually give a damn. No more ghostwriters, no more comedy-by-commitee, no more producing for the lowest common denominator. No more WWF. Ever.

Re:Famously rich?

[rho]

So, in your mind, if you think it's stupid and lame, it is stupid and lame for everybody?

Applying your logic, if DRM is good for the RIAA, then it is good for everybody. What's your complaint?

Re:Famously rich?

[rho]

It is still more complicated, and more expensive to re-distribute an analogue work than a digital one. Photocopying a book takes MUCH longer and is more expensive than burning a copy of a CD.

The issue isn't so much Fair Use. If everybody were *just* burning copies for themselves, I honestly think the RIAA, et. al. wouldn't have so much of their collective underwear in a knot. However, the practice of rampant piracy (delude yourself all you want, but KaZaA/Morpheus/Gnutella is primarily about getting free music and software) has them scared, and they want to defend their possessions.

Understand, I'm not passing judgement here, just observing--they have a legitimate fear: losing the ability to sell music and make a profit. Whether they actually would or would not make a profit in the future is not the issue: they can't bet their livlihoods on a "maybe".

The issue isn't increased wealth at all--at least, I don't think it is. They don't want their current level of revenues to decrease, which they are afraid of happening in the future when everybody has an OC-12 to their apartment. If you choose to denigrate them for not wanting to lose revenues, I respectfully ask you to go to your boss *right now* and ask for a pay cut.

Finally, if you're so confident in human goodness, quit your job and live on the street. Try to live solely off human goodness for a while, then come back and tell me how much of it there is. Or, for an easier metric, try to estimate the percentage of legal to illegal data gets passed around on the various P2P systems. Fair use *might* apply in the case of sharing an albumn with a close friend or family member, but it really doesn't apply to l0rdDoVVnl0d4r@KaZaA.com, whom you've never met (and probably wouldn't want to meet either).

Very Bad for government

[wfrp01]

Why would any government want to manage its affairs using computers over which a third party maintained complete control?

To sum, this OS plus secure hardware implementation can hide, make invisible, one process from another. To hear them speak of it, it sounds like they are (oh so generously) only assisting the financially beleagured content industry (music, et al) from the rampages of brutish hacker pirate outlaws. That's a deserves a rant of it's own. But think about this. They are talking about this like their simply protecting data. Well, as we all know, there's a special form of data called a program. I.E. - such an OS could completely obscure the very existance of this or that program. You could never really know what your OS was up to.

Now couple this with a secure network communication protocol. Kind of gives spyware a whole new meaning now, doesn't it?

And the United States government should pass some laws to help make this all possible. Will someone up on the hill, a lot of someones, please get clued in about this shit?!

How to defeat DRM OS.

[gblues]

1. Install DRM OS and place desired digital media files on the HD.
2. Remove HD and attach to standard Linux PC.
3. dd if=/dev/hdb of=/root/hdbimage bs=512 count=(size of HD in bytes / 512)
4. Use image created above in an emulator (say, DRMEmu).
5. Using emulator, load the DRM-protected files in "trusted" application.
6. Play the DRM file. Of course, rather than piping the output to the soundcard, the emulator writes the raw data to disk...

Goodbye DRM, hello MP3.

Nathan

Re:How to defeat DRM OS.

[alecto]

I'm sure Microsoft would never think to check to see if they're running in an emulated or virtual environment (both major commercial products in this space, VMware and VirtualPC, have trivial ways--even specific hooks--for checking this). It works now, but I don't imagine it'll continue to work.

Re:Microsoft has some really major people on this.

[Hobart]

(Clarification - only Lampson was named on the patent, the others I was just mentioning are just MS employees)

Re:Arrgh! No one's read the claims yet!

[mpe]

The "compromise" will be that people can either (a) run "Digital Rights Management Compliant" operating systems from Microsoft, Apple, and maybe a few others, or (b) Get a license to run a "non-Certified" operating system. Getting the license will put you in a big database. Your IP address will be tracked. The government will get away with this because they will point out that only a small percentage of computer users will need to get licensed, and most of those will actually be ISP's running Linux servers.

Effectivly an OS aparthied, so they'll need to obscurate the language involved depending how well those they might inconvenience have actually read the US constitution.

Re:No, no, no.

[truthsearch]

But they're claiming patent directly on "a computer system comprising a processing unit, a system memory coupled to the processing unit through a system bus, and a computer-readable medium coupled to the processing unit through a system bus" along with the OS. Wouldn't that include a Dell computer with Windows XP installed?

This is in the list of claims the patenter (is that a word?) holds, so the way I read it they are holding a patent for the entire computer.

I don't disagree with your comment, but this patent seems to contain more than just the DRM OS.

Re:If Microsoft is going to be the Watchman...

[mpe]

Until the people are the watchman, you're going to have corruption on all levels.

You also end up with people acting in secret in the name of the US. Doing some very nasty things to people all over the world...

That was the initial idea behind the American Government.
Look where we are now. "Screw the people, what can it do for me?"

So how do you avoid getting a situation whereby large political parties render distinctions between different arms and levels of government meaningless? How about enabling people to raise issues with the government without the result that laws end up written by professional lobbiest?

The problem is, if the people are the watchmen, things like this don't come to be, you retain your freedoms, and Microsoft doesn't get paid.

Actually the basic problem is that being a "watchman" is not always an easy job. Whereas trusting in some "authority" is the easy path.
At some point elected officals have become seen as being elevated above ordinary citizens...

Re:Misnomer

[mpe]

Under the terms of the Constitution, the content provider doesn't own the content.

Actually the US constitution only grants the rights to the actual content producer (e.g. an author) it does not recognise that any such rights as being transferable to anyone else.
Which is important since most of the "content providers" are actually simply publishing someone elses work.

They just hold a limited artifical monopoly (copyright) that the Congress is not even obliged to grant in the first place.

The US congress is obligated to create some laws in this area, to meet a specific end. But "copyright" is simply one of a set of possible options.

Double Speak

[4of12]

Why not name it more accurately?

Content Use Restriction Operating System

OTOH, "CUR-OS" kinda reminds me of some old GNU README files that referred to MS-DOG. There would probably be too much confusion between the canines.

And it's patented ...

[jc42]

> It's nice to know MS can conceive of it. Too bad they can't *build* it.

And note that the link was to a patent. This means that you can't build it, either, without being hit by a patent-infringement lawsuit from the biggest bully on the block.

If the courts uphold this patent, we can expect that Microsoft will be getting royalties from anyone who incorporates any DRM into their products.

Re:RIAA virgin sacrifices

[OmegaDan]

Yes, if only being slapped by them counted! :)

Xbox and the CUSTOM Intel CPU

[Technician]

I noticed on several of the what's inside sites that the X box has an Intel CPU, but it is always listed as "custom". I'm beginning to think the custom part is more than just how it is attached to the motherboard. MS is big enough to submit a custom CPU order to Intel and get it made. Let's hope it can't break the chicken and egg syndrone.

No content for lack of users / No subscriptions due to lack of content choices May it die the Circuit City cripled DVD format death.

Re:If you don't like it, then don't buy it.

[mikera]

Big Blue was perhaps a monopoly, but it didn't have something called "barriers to entry". Hence lots of nible competitirs leapt in, cut prices, improved quality and gained market share. We ended up with a pretty competitive PC market. That's how markets *should* work.

I have not so far seen a shred of evidence that any commercial competitor is seriously challenging Microsoft on the desktop, and by extension, many related areas of computing. The barriers to entry are just too large. Hence I do not see anyone about to "stop buying Microsoft" because there isn't actually any choice.

If microsoft have less than 50% market share and credible competitors in all areas of the software business it might be different. But I don't see that happening anytime soon....

Re:Arrgh! No one's read the claims yet!

[Azog]

I don't think it would actually be found unconstitutional. After all, compare it to vehicle licenses:

You don't need a license to operate a bicycle. You do need a license to operate a car. You need a different, harder-to-get license to operate an 18-wheeler or a bus.

You don't need a license or background checks to buy, own, or use a slingshot or BB gun. But you generally need to get a background check to buy a real firearm, and you need to get permits for concealed carry.

There's lots of other examples.

So.... my prediction is you won't need a license for Windows or Apple, but you will need a license for any operating system where you can change the source code.

With all of these examples, it's all about how much power the user has, and how "dangerous" that power can make you to society / government / big business. You need a license for the "powerful" tool - be it a car, a gun, or maybe soon, a source-code-available operating system.

Therefore, as much as I hate it, I think a law requiring licensing for free software would be constitutional.
.

Whats your take on DRM based os's ?

[Billly Gates]

I am scared to death of Microsoft. I am not scared about the dominance of Windows and MS Office but I am concerned about the power ms will have with its patent on DRM operating systems. Under corrupt laws like the DMCA which will make any workaround around on MS-DRM an illegal or terrorist act, ms will then have a real %100 monopoly that can not be broken legally. If its Windows DRM enabled OS is licensed and not sold like most ms products, I am sure that ms will also have the power to tell people how to use their own computers and without legal competitions due to DRM enabled hardware, there would be no choice. This is very dangerous stuff. This would make the current IE bundling case look tiny in comparison. What would you do to make sure something like this nightmare scenario will never happen.

Turning the monster against itself

[dcavanaugh]

The M$ patent on DRM could be a blessing in disguise. After all, there isn't going to be a Linux version of their DRM technology. This means there will always be a substantial community of non-DRM computer users.

Even if M$ releases DRM-related products for Linux, they will get lobotomized and/or hacked in less than a week. Let them build as much silliness as they like into Windoze. Has M$ EVER released a highly secure, platform-indepenent product?